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Select Essays 



OF 



Arthur Schopenhauer, 



TRANSLATED BY 



GARRITT DROPPERS AND C. R. P. DACMSEL 



He took the suffering human race ; 

He read, each v, r curj, eaoh weakness 
He struck his finger on the plaoe, 

And said, 'Thou ailest here and her< 






^PlCihuaulYce : 
SENTINEL COMPANY. PRINTERS. 

1881. 






Entered according to Act of Congress in (he year 1881, 

By Garritt DRorrERs and C. A. P. Dachsel, 

lu the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, - - - - - 9 

THE MISERY OF LIFE; . . . . . 29 

METAPHYSICS OF LOVE, - - - - - 55 

GENIUS, - - - 100 

^ESTHETICS OF POETRY, -. - .<- - 144 

EDUCATION, --------- 170 



PREFACE. 



•WHOEVER wishes to understand my philosophy 
thoroughly," says Schopenhauer, " must read every 
line of my works;" for many of his apparently paradoxi- 
cal assertions are really but logical deductions from his 
system of philosophy. The following essays, therefore, give 
the reader hut a general insighl into his characteristics. 
However, we have selected those essays which are most 
unique and complete in themselves. 

We have adhered as closely as possible to the literal, 
even retaining peculiarities of style. 

We hope that this little work will serve to eradicate 
many of the superstitions current about Schopenhauer. 

The short biographical sketch preceding the essays is 
mainly an excerpt from Gwinner's "Life of Schopenhauer." 

Milwaukee, May 21. 1881. 



BI0GWFIC?lfc J3KEWCJL 



^ RTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, the eldest child 
' and only son of Henry Floris Schopenhauer, 
a wealthy merchant, and of Johanna Scho- 
penhauer, the well-known authoress, was born on 
the 22d of February, 1788, at Danzig, then a small 
German free-state. 

Arthur's father was not a common man. That 
rare faculty of combining the pride of the aristocrat 
with the enterprising spirit of the merchant, he 
possessed in an eminent degree. Though devoted 
to business, he by no means neglected his mental 
culture, reading with especial interest the works of 
Voltaire. During a sojourn of several years in 
France and England, he became thoroughly famil- 
iar with the language and customs of those coun- 
tries. So prepossessed was he in favor of the state 
and family life of the English, that for a long time 
he meditated settling down among them. His home 
was furnished with English comfort. Daily he read 
an English and a French newspaper, and induced 
his son at an early age to do the same. And 
Arthur followed the paternal advice to the end of 



10 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

his lift. He himself says of his father : " He was 
a strict, passionate man, but of irreproachable rec- 
titude and fidelity, and endowed with an excellent 
insight into commercial matters. How much I am 
indebted to him, I can hardly express in words. 
All the advantages — liberty, leisure, and all the 
resources to follow the career for which alone I was 
born — I owe solely to him. They enabled me to 
prosecute exclusively, for a number of years, stud- 
ies which are the last to yield pecuniary reward, 
and to follow researches and meditations of the most 
difficult kind. Therefore, as long as I live, I will 
ever cherish in my heart the inexpressible merits 
and provident care of my best father, and keep his 
memory sacred." 

At the age of thirty-eight, the elder Schopenhauer 
selected for marriage Johanna Trosiener, the daugh- 
ter of a Danzig senator. Sagacious, witty, talkative, 
and not without personal charms, she afterwards 
gained a reputation as a novelist and writer of 
travels. Her husband was twenty years her senior. 

From his father, Arthur inherited the passionate 
temperament, the proud, inflexible spirit, the keen 
sense of order, and the burning love of truth and 
justice ; from his mother, the vivacity and acuteness 
of the intuitive powers, sagacity, and facility of 
linguistic expression : Mother and son were both 
brilliant conversers. When, in 1793, the small Re- 
public yielded to Prussian power, the parents fled to 
Hamburg, where their stay was interrupted by fre- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 11 

quent trips on the Continent. In the course of 
these travels, they became acquainted with many 
famous contemporaries, — Klopstock, Tischbein, Rei- 
marus, Baron Stael, Sieveking, Lady Hamilton, and 
Lord Nelson. 

Arthur's education as a man of the world was the 
secondary object of these travels, which his father 
never lost sight of. When, in 1797, they made a 
pleasure trip to France and England, the boy, who 
had hitherto received instruction in a private school, 
was left with a friend at Havre. Says Schopen- 
hauer: "After we had seen Paris, I stayed over two 
years at Havre, where I was educated with the son 
of the house, who was of the same age, so that, if 
possible, I might become a thorough Frenchman. 
We were instructed by private tutors in all the 
branches and accomplishments adapted to that ten- 
der age. We were grounded in the French language, 
and also in the rudiments of Latin. In that friendly 
city, situated at the mouth of the Seine, and on the 
seashore, I passed the happiest days of my child- 
hood." 

When he returned without a companion to Ham- 
burg, he had almost forgotten his native language, 
and could but gradually again accustom himself to 
its harsh sounds. He then entered Runge's private 
institution, where the sons of the most respectable 
families were his schoolmates. At this time there 
arose in him a love for science, which was very 
displeasing to his father, to whom a scholar's 



12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

career seemed inseparable from poverty; accord- 
ingly, Arthur's father had recourse to the following 
stratagem. He availed himself of the boy's longing 
for his beloved friend in Havre, and of his equally 
potent desire to see the world, by giving him the 
choice either to immediately enter the gymnasium, 
or, forever resigning a scholar's career, to engage in 
a mercantile pursuit, after enjoying a few years of 
travel. Arthur, then fifteen years of age, could not 
resist the temptation. During a visit to England, 
he was put into the boarding-school of a parson at 
Wimbledon, where he spent several months under 
his care, while his parents made an excursion to 
the Highlands. He there laid the foundation to 
his future intimacy with English language and lit- 
erature, but also to his hatred of English bigotry. 
The gay manners of the French were more con- 
genial to him than English reserve, so that in the 
colder atmosphere he found himself suddenly thrown 
back on his own resources. However, he was al- 
lowed to devote his time to the fine arts and to 
gymnastic exercises, flute-playing, singing, drawing, 
riding, fencing, and dancing. 

On their return to Hamburg, in 1805, Arthur, 
true to his pledge, entered a mercantile business, 
which was utterly repulsive to him. " I entered," 
says he, " the business of a respectable Hamburg 
merchant and senator; but there never lived a worse 
apprentice than myself. My whole nature was op- 
posed to this occupation ; with something else ever 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 

in my mind, I neglected my duties, and was, day 
after day, intent but upon gaining time which I 
might devote at home to my books, or during which 
I could, at least, revel in thoughts and fantasies. 
Besides, I always had books hidden in the office, 
and, whenever I was not watched, I perused them. 
When the famous founder of phrenology, Gall, 
was delivering lectures in Hamburg, I constantly 
attended them, daily deceiving my superiors with 
cunning pretexts. In addition to this, a deep de- 
pression of spirits made me disobedient and bur- 
densome to others, partly because, in place of the 
continual diversions, to which my journeys had ac- 
customed me, I was bound to a hated occupation; 
partly, because I became more and more convinced 
that I had taken a wrong course of life, a mistake 
I wholly despaired of correcting." 

But this did not continue long. The sudden 
death of his father threw him into the saddest 
mood, not far removed from true melancholy. 
Although he was then his own master, as his 
mother allowed him to do as he pleased, he did 
not at once leave the office; excessive grief had 
destroyed the energy of his mind, and he hesitated 
to break his promise; besides, he considered him- 
self too far advanced in life to learn the ancient 
languages. But his work daily grew more intolera- 
ble to him. After two years wholly useless to him, 
he broke out into violent lamentations to his mother 
over his frustrated life-purpose, and over the irrep- 



14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

arable loss of his youthful powers devoted to fruit- 
less labor. 

During this time his mother was living at Wei- 
mar, whither she had moved after the death of her 
husband. She mingled with the gay society of the 
place, and in her salon were gathered all the literati 
of the day. Feeling the necessity of a change in 
the occupation of her son, she consulted her friend 
Fernow, who advised her to send Arthur to the 
University. At the receipt of his mother's letter 
granting his request, he burst into tears. His reso- 
lution was at once taken. In the beginning of 
1807 he entered the then nourishing gymnasium at 
Gotha, but, being entirely ignorant of the classical 
languages, he could participate in those studies only 
which did not require a knowledge of those lan- 
guages. But a dangerous habit of indulging in sar- 
castic remarks forced him to leave the gymnasium 
before the close of the year. On his return to 
Weimar, he lived for two years with Passow, an 
able classical scholar, who prepared him for the 
University. Towards the end of 1809, being now of 
age, he matriculated at the University of Gcettin- 
gen as a student of medicine. That these years at 
the University were spent to advantage, Schopen- 
hauer's own words will attest: "After I had obtained 
some, though but superficial, knowledge of myself 
and of philosophy, I changed my resolution, and, 
discarding medicine, devoted myself exclusively to 
philosophy. However, the time which I had de- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 

voted to the former was by no means wasted; for 
up to this time I had attended but such lectures 
as are useful to the philosopher as well. I applied 
myself diligently to scientific studies, from which 
my intercourse with other students could by no 
means deter me, for my more mature age, my richer 
experience, and my fundamentally different nature, 
led me at all times to isolation and solitude. 
Though I attended the lectures regularly, I still 
had a great deal of time to read, which I devoted 
especially to Kant and Plato. I attended G. E. 
Schulze's lectures on logic, metaphysics, and psy- 
chology ; Heeren's, on history ; Blumenbach's, on 
natural history, mineralogy, physiology, and com- 
parative anatomy; and many others." 

In 1811, he continued his studies at Berlin, where 
Wolf was lecturing on Greek literature and anti- 
quities, Lichtenstein on zoology, Fichte on philoso- 
phy. In Berlin, too, he would have remained two 
years, had not the war of 1813 driven him away; 
which he deplored the more, because he was pre- 
paring to obtain the degree of Ph. D. from the Ber- 
lin University For this reason he had commenced 
to write the treatise, " On the Four-fold Root of the 
Principle of Sufficient Reason." It was his inten- 
tion to return home to Weimar, but he was so 
much displeased with certain domestic relations 
that he sought another place of refuge. In Rudol- 
stadt, beautifully situated in a valley, he spent the 
summer in completing the dissertation commenced 



16 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

at Berlin. But the dreariness of winter soon drove 
him back to Weimar, and here, according to his 
own account, there occurred one of the happiest 
events of his life : " For," says he, " that truly great 
ornament of our century and of the German nation, 
the great Goethe, whose name will forever be on 
the lips of men, deemed me worthy of his friend- 
ship and of intimate intercourse. For before this, I 
was known to him but by sight; but after he had 
looked over my treatise, he came to me of his own 
accord and asked me whether I would like to study 
his theory of colors. He promised to assist me in 
every way, so that this theme might become the 
subject of our conversation, whether or no I would 
agree with his opinions. Several days afterward, he 
sent me his own apparatus and the instruments 
necessary to the production of the phenomena of 
colors, and later, he himself showed me the more 
difficult experiments, highly delighted that my 
mind, blinded by no preconceived opinions, recog- 
nized the truth of his doctrine, which, to the pres- 
ent day, from causes which it is out of place to 
mention here, has been denied consent and due 
acknowledgment. When we became more intimate, 
our conversation was not restricted to the theory of 
colors, but we discussed, for hours at a time, all 
possible -philosophical topics. From this intimate 
intercourse with him I have profited much." 

In the spring of 1814, he betook himself to Dres- 
den, to continue his studies, but more especially, to 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17 

work out the system of philosophy which was al- 
ready forming in his mind. He also developed his 
theory of colors, which was published in 1816. 
Two years later, he brought to a close his philo- 
sophical system, which had almost uninterruptedly 
engaged his attention for five years, and upon which 
his reputation substantially rests. Soon after, he 
sought recreation in a journey to Italy. He visited 
Venice, Bologne, Florence; lastly Rome, where he 
stayed nearly four months, and enjoyed himself in 
contemplating the monuments of antiquity, as well 
as modern works of art. After an absence of eleven 
months, he returned to Dresden, and subsequently 
to Berlin, where he delivered a course of lectures 
at the University on his system of philosophy. 
After a few months they were discontinued for want 
of attendance, while people even crawled through 
the windows to listen to Hegel, whose fame was 
then at its height. Thus two years (1820-22) passed, 
in which, though his ambition did not receive the 
least encouragement, he crystallized and extended 
his scientific knowledge. But the atmosphere of 
Berlin threatened to suffocate him. In order to re- 
tain confidence in himself and his calling, in the 
beginning of May, 1822, he traveled to Switzerland, 
after making his will. He enjoyed a splendid sum- 
mer in the Alps, and in the fall continued his 
journey to Florence, where he spent the winter. 
Upon his return from Italy to Munich, he lay sick 
all winter. The single ray of sunshine which light- 



18 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

ened those dark days was a distinction which the 
Academy of that city conferred upon him. In a 
pamphlet published by the Academy on the pro- 
gress of the theory of the mechanism of the senses, 
himself and Purkinje were the only ones mentioned. 
The year 1826 ended a five years' lawsuit with a 
spinster by the name of Marquet, who had sued 
Schopenhauer for injuries she claimed she had sus- 
tained when he expelled her from his premises. 
The court decided in favor of the. plaintiff, and he 
was compelled to support her for the rest of her 
life. Twenty years after, he wrote on her death 
certificate, "Obit anus, obit onus." The manifest in- 
justice, the humiliation, and disappointment at the 
issue of this " confounded " suit struck him more 
heavily than the material loss he incurred. Hardly 
entered into manhood, he had experienced its bitter 
lessons, although he sought neither money, nor 
friendship, nor honors ; in a word, none of the 
prizes which it is the ambition of others to win. 
His inner life seems to have been entirely devoid of 
growth during this period ; with woeful reflections, 
he already turns his eye to the past. On his thirty- 
eighth birthday, the days of the lawsuit, he writes 
the following reflection: "Objects are for the mind 
only what the lyre is for the plectrum. At the time 
my mental activity was at its height, when, by fa- 
voring circumstances, the hour came in which my 
brain was at its greatest tension, my eye could 
strike what object soever it listed — it spoke revela- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 19 

tions to me. But now, being old, die va mancando 
V entusiasmo celeste, I can stand before the Madonna 
of Raphael, and she tells me nothing." 

But Schopenhauer, perhaps prone by nature to 
see the misery of the world in the darkest colors, 
was, in spite of his numerous practical failures and 
misfortunes, by no means a gloomy hermit. His 
frequent travels, his profound remarks on men and 
things, and his occasional love affairs, proving that he 
took a keen interest in human matters, corroborate 
the opinion of the Revue Contemporaine : "Schopen- 
hauer is not like other philosophers : he is a phi- 
losopher who has seen the world." 

On Nov. 1st, 1818, he writes in his journal: "He 
who is suddenly transplanted into a wholly strange 
land or city, where there is a very different manner 
of living, or even another language, feels like one 
who has plunged into cold water: he comes in con- 
tact with a temperature very different from his own; 
he feels a powerful, superior, outside influence which 
makes him uneasy. He is in a foreign element 
where he cannot move with ease; besides, because 
everything strikes him in a new and conspicuous 
light, he is afraid of being as conspicuous to others. 
But as soon as he is somewhat calmed, and has 
accustomed himself to the environment, and ac- 
cepted its temperature somewhat, he feels, like the 
one in cold water, extraordinarily well; he becomes 
assimilated to the element. He is then no longer 
forced to occupy himself with his person, and di- 



20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

rects his whole attention to the surroundings, to 
which, by the very objective, neutral contemplation, 
he now feels himself superior, instead of being de- 
pressed by it as before." In such high spirits he 
entered the land of beauty; he was neither born 
nor educated to be a pedant. Our philosopher, and 
another famous pessimist, the author of " Childe 
Harold," happened to be in Venice at the same" 
time. An almost ungovernable " will to live " drove 
both through the same heights and depths — how 
else could they have represented it with such match- 
less power ? Byron, — who at that time created that 
work of which Goethe says that it is the product 
of boundless genius, misanthropic to bitterest cru- 
elty, philanthropic to depths of sweetest emotion, — 
writes, at the close of the Carnival, to Tom Moore: 
" I will work the mine of my youth to the last 
veins of the ore, and then, 'good-night.' I have 
lived, and am content." Even in old age, a tender 
mood, otherwise wholly foreign to him, overcame 
Schopenhauer when he spoke of Venice, where the 
magic arms of love ensnared him for a time, until 
an inner voice commanded him to tear himself 
away and continue his journey alone. Byron was 
in the habit, when the weather permitted, of taking 
his gondola to the Lido, where he kept his horses, 
in order to take his daily ride along the beach to 
Malamocco. On one of these trips he met Scho- 
penhauer, a meeting which the latter remembered 
the more as his Venetian mistress aroused his 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 

jealousy by the lively interest she took in Byron's 
splendid appearance. The philosopher and the 
poet chanced to become acquainted in this manner: 
They were riding in gondolas, accompanied by their 
mistresses, who were fast friends and introduced 
the gentlemen to each other. At this time, Cha- 
teaubriand and Leopardi were in Italy, so that the 
four great pessimists could have had the best op- 
portunity to hold a congress of pessimists along with 
the congress of Verona. 

At Berlin, in 1826, he was in such a gloomy frame 
of mind that the idea of marrying, often rejected, 
came to him with redoubled force. When he had 
given up the hope of obtaining a professorship, he 
intended to marry and move into a country town 
— to cut off every opportunity to purchase books, 
a necessity, to gratify which seemed seriously to 
threaten his economy at Berlin in case he married. 
However, he soon rid himself of these illusions. 
In one of his works he says: "What people com- 
monly call fate, is usually nothing but their own 
folly ; evil deeds are atoned for in the next world ; 
foolish deeds, in this." The older he became, the 
more easily could he choose his course, the more 
reasons he amassed in favor of his bachelordom. 
He felt in himself neither the ability, nor the call- 
ing, nor the courage, to assume the burdens and 
responsibilities of married life. Intellectuality was 
at all times preponderant in him. From youth, 
his dreams of happiness were always founded upon 



22 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

scenes of repose and solitude. If his real life, he 
thought, had been the cardinal affair of his exist- 
ence and the source of his enjoyments, he would 
have done well to marry ; but, as his life, on the 
contrary, was an ideal, an intellectual one, he dared 
not do it ; for one must be sacrificed to the other. 
A man who, from what reason soever, has departed 
from the natural course of life, durst never marry. 
He considered his inheritance a sacred treasure, en- 
trusted to him to solve the problem imposed upon 
him by nature, to be, for himself and humanity, 
that for which she destined him; otherwise, he 
would be useless to humanity, and, perhaps, lead 
the most miserable existence a man of his stamp 
ever led. Therefore, he considered it the most un- 
grateful and unworthy misuse of so rare a lot, if, 
in the so often disappointed expectation of a life 
richer in enjoyments, he would expend, perhaps, 
half of his income in "bonnets and dresses." He 
was of the opinion that the more reasonable and 
wiser a man is, the worse he fares in a union with 
the "unreasonable half of mankind;'' and justly, 
as this union on his part is greater folly. Finally, 
who has reached the age of forty without burden- 
ing himself with wife and children must have, in- 
deed, learned little, if he would then marry. Such 
a man appeared to him like one who has tramped 
three-fourths of a distance, and then wishes to pur- 
chase a ticket for the whole trip. He took a de- 
light in finding similar maxims in the works of 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23 

great predecessors. He loved to appeal to Bacon, — 
" Essay on marriage and single life," — who says: 
"He that hath wife and children, hath given hos- 
tages to Fortune; for they are impediments to great 
enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly, 
the best works, and of greatest merit for the pub- 
lic, have procedecl from the unmarried, or childless 
men, which, both in affection and means, have 
endowed the public." His true companion was 
philosophy, of which he beautifully says: "Philos- 
ophy is a lofty Alpine road, to which there leads 
.but a steep path, over sharp stones and pricking- 
thorns; the path is lonely, and becomes more deso- 
late the higher you ascend; and who passes over 
it, must know no trembling, but forsake all, and 
calmly make his own way through the cold snow. 
Often, he suddenly stands on the verge of an abyss, 
and sees the green valley below; dizziness takes 
possession of him; but he must hold his ground, 
though he waste his life-blood in the effort to cling 
to the rocks. But, as a reward, he soon sees the 
world beneath him; its deserts and morasses vanish; 
its unevenness is leveled; its discords do not reach 
him; its rotundity is revealed. He himself always, 
stands in pure, cool Alpine air, and sees the sun, 
when black night still hangs heavy over the coun- 
try below." 

In 1831, a cholera epidemic drove him from 
Berlin to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where, with few 
interruptions, he lived until his death. Shortly 



24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

after his arrival at that city, which he called "too 
small for a great, too great for a small city, and, on 
the whole, a nest of gossip," he fell sick, and be- 
came so ill-humored, that, for weeks, he spoke to no 
human soul. This was caused partly by the neg- 
lect of his works, which he had offered in vain to 
his contemporaries, and partly by his failing to se- 
cure an academic chair. For nearly a generation 
he lived among the shop-keepers and money-makers 
of this city, undisturbed and unknown, or merely 
referred to as u the son of the famous Johanna 
Schopenhauer." 

The disadvantages accompanying genius, which 
he has so drastically described in his own works, 
were felt by Schopenhauer perhaps more than by 
any other of those rare intellects. Nature did her 
best to isolate his heart, endowing it with suspi- 
cion, irritability, vehemence, and pride, in a meas- 
ure almost incapable of being united with the mens 
aequa of the philosopher. He inherited from his 
father a dread bordering on mania, against which 
he struggled all his life, with all the will-power at 
his command, and which, at times, on the most 
trivial occasions, overcame him with such power 
that he saw the most improbable evils before him. 
A fertile imagination frequently magnified this na- 
tive tendency to an incredible degree. When but 
a child of six, his parents, returning home from a 
walk one evening, found him in utter despair, im- 
agining that they had deserted him forever. When 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25 

a youth, he was tortured by all sorts of imaginary 
evils and quarrels. While studying at Berlin, he 
fancied himself consumptive. In Verona, the fixed 
idea seized him that he had taken poisoned snuff. 
He never entrusted himself to the razor of a bar- 
ber. He always carried a small leather cup with 
him, in order to avoid catching contagious diseases 
when drinking in public places. Bacon's saying, 
that all suspicion is founded on ignorance, he re- 
jected, and thought, with Chamfort, " The beginning 
of wisdom is fear of men." 

The same man, whose highest tenet of morals 
was, that he is the best man who makes least dis- 
tinction between himself and others, and he the 
worst who makes most, was possessed of the deep, 
unwavering conviction that starry spaces separated 
him from those with whom he ought to mingle, 
and whom he ought to love. 

The boy, gazing with astonished eyes upon this 
life, maintained by hunger and love; the youth, 
timidly approaching it, hiding his own inner world; 
the man, opposing it as a hostile stranger; the old 
man, at last, beholding it far beneath him, and his 
fiery, clear eye chilled in cold resignation; — all this 
must be seen, to make ethically intelligible to us 
his sad loneliness, the desolate waste of his exist- 
ence, his unspeakable scorn of men, the hardness 
of the pride with which he surrounded his heart 
as with a coat of mail. 

His reading was, perhaps, less extensive than 

3 



26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

many would suppose. But his incomparable dis- 
crimination in selecting passages from authors, and 
in bringing these in on the proper occasion, enabled 
him to cull from the remotest fields of literature 
whatever was necessary to his purposes; so that 
his books, apart from their intrinsic merits, are a 
repository of splendid quotations from a wide range 
of writers. 

A habit of reading the ancient writers for two 
hours a day, made him almost as familiar with 
Greek and Latin as with his mother- tongue. 
Horace and Seneca were his favorite Latin authors; 
David Hume, his favorite English; Helvetius, his 
favorite French author. He took a deep interest 
in the ascetic and mystic literature of all times 
and climes. " Buddha, Eckhart, and myself," he 
says, in one of his posthumous fragments, "in the 
main teach the same." Pieces which never ceased 
to delight him, were the 105th Epistle of Seneca; 
the beginning of Hobbes' De Cive; Machiavelli's 
Principe; the speech of Polonius to Laertes, in 
Hamlet; the maxims of Gracian, Shenstone, Klin- 
ger, and the French moralists. Throughout his life 
he was fond of the great poets, especially Shakes- 
peare and Goethe, and, next, Calderon and Byron, 
whose pessimistic Cain naturally pleased him most. 
Petrarch, Burns, and Burger, he gave a high rank. 
Second-rate poets he never read. As the Italians 
boast of their four poets, he spoke with' pleasure of 
four romances, " Don Quixote," " Tristram Shandy," 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27 

" Heloise," and " Wilhelm Meister," thus ascribing 
one to each nation, with the exception of the Ital- 
ians; "for Boccaccio," he says, "relates nothing but 
scandals." The " Wilhelm Meister" he calls an intel- 
lectual romance, whose key-note is the idea that in 
life we fare like the wanderer, before whom, as he 
advances, objects take shapes different from those 
which they show from afar, and, as it were, trans- 
form themselves at his approach; so that we find 
something very different, nay, better than what we 
sought; instead of pastimes and happiness, instruc- 
tion and insight; a lasting and true good, instead 
of a perishable and seeming good. 

Schopenhauer, to some extent, imitated Kant's 
mode of living. He was not an early riser, as he 
believed that a long sleep was necessary for a brain- 
worker. Summer and winter, he arose between 
seven and eight o'clock. He prepared his own 
coffee. During the morning hours, he wished to 
be alone, even requiring his servant to keep out of 
his sight. In the latter part of his life, when his 
reputation was growing, he received visitors toward 
noon. He dined at one o'clock. His appetite was 
so hearty that he even held it among his vices, 
but consoled himself with the fact that Kant and 
Goethe were also huge feeders, and that he was the 
more moderate drinker. He liked to converse at 
meals, but, for want of fit company, he usually con- 
templated his neighbors. For a time, he daily laid 
a ducat on the table, without his table-companions 



28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

understanding his motive. At last, when asked 
about it, he replied that he would give it to the 
poor, if the officers dining with him would but 
once start a more earnest conversation than about 
horses, dogs, and women. After dinner, he went 
home, took a short siesta, and spent the earlier 
part of the afternoon in reading light literature. 
Towards evening he went into the open air, and 
always chose the most secluded paths. His gait 
was rapid and of youthful elasticity to the end of 
his life. He often indulged in the eccentricities 
common to persons of a sanguine temperament, as, 
for instance, striking the ground with his bamboo 
cane, and uttering inarticulate sounds. His supper, 
taken between eight and nine o'clock, consisted of 
cold meats and half a bottle of light wine. Wine 
easily excited him, so that he became lively after the 
second glass. To beer he had a decided aversion. 

The second volume of " The World as Will and 
Representation," was published in 1843. His last, 
and most popular work " Parerga and Paralipomena" 
upon which he spent six years of incessant labor, 
appeared in 1850. 

He died on the 20th of September, 1860. Ac- 
cording to his own direction, he was buried in an 
oak coffin. A square slab, with the inscription, 
Arthur Schopenhauer, marks his grave in the cemetery 
at Frankfort-on-the-Main. When asked by his friend 
and biographer, Dr. Gwinner, where he wished to 
lie, he replied, "Anywhere; they will find me." 



TflE PI3E^Y 0F MFE 



STuJAVING awakened to life from the night of 
211' "JL unconsciousness, the will finds itself as 
an individual in an endless and boundless 
world, among innumerable individuals, all striving, 
suffering, erring; and, as though passing through 
an uneasy dream, it hurries back to the old un- 
consciousness. Until then, however, its desires are 
boundless, its claims inexhaustible, and every sat- 
isfied wish begets a new one. No satisfaction pos- 
sible in the world could suffice to still its longings, 
put a final end to its craving, and fill the bottom- 
less abyss of its heart. Consider, too, what gratifi- 
cations of every kind man generally receives: they 
are, usually, nothing more than the meagre preser- 
vation of this existence itself, daily gained by in- 
cessant toil and constant care, in battle against 
want, with death forever in the van. Everything 
in life indicates that earthly happiness is destined 
to be frustrated, or to be recognized as an illusion. 
The germs for this lie deep in the nature of things. 
Accordingly, the life of most of us proves sad and 



30 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

short. The comparatively happy are usually only 
apparently so, or are, like long-lived persons, rare 
exceptions, — left as a bait for the rest. 

Life proves a continued deceit, in great as well 
as small matters. If it makes a promise, it does 
not keep it, unless to show how unworthy the cov- 
eted object was; thus, sometimes hope, sometimes 
what was hoped for, deludes us. If it gave, it was 
but to take away. The fascination of distance pre- 
sents a paradise, vanishing like an optical delusion, 
when we have allowed ourselves to be enticed 
thither. Happiness, accordingly, lies always in the 
future, or in the past; and the present is to be 
compared to a small, dark cloud which the wind 
drives over the sunny plain; before it and behind 
it, all is bright; it alone casts a shadow. The pres- 
ent, therefore, is forever unsatisfactory; the future, 
uncertain; the past, irrecoverable. Life, with its 
hourly, daily, weekly, and yearly, small, greater, 
and great adversities, with its disappointed hopes, 
and mishaps foiling all calculation, bears so plainly 
the stamp of something we should get disgusted 
with, that it is difficult to comprehend how any 
one could have mistaken this, and been persuaded 
that life was to be thankfully enjoyed, and we to be 
happy. Much more, that everlasting delusion and 
disappointment, as well as the constitution of life 
throughout, appear as though they were intended 
and calculated to awaken the conviction that noth- 
ing whatever is worthy of our striving, driving, and 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 31 

wrestling, — that all goods are naught, the world 
bankrupt at all ends, and life a business that does 
not pay expenses, — in order that our will may turn 
away from it. 

The manner in which this nothingness of all ob- 
jects of the will makes itself manifest and compre- 
hensible to the intellect rooted in the individual, is, 
in the first place, time. Time is the form, by means 
of which this nothingness of things appears as tran- 
sitoriness; since through the latter all our enjoy- 
ments and pleasures come to nought, and we after- 
ward ask, in astonishment, what has become of 
them. This nothingness itself, accordingly, is the 
only thing objective about time, that is, that which 
corresponds to it in the existence of things per se; 
consequently, that of which it ; is the expression. 
For this very reason, time is the apriori necessary 
form of all our perceptions; in it, all, even we our- 
selves, must be represented. Accordingly, in the 
first place, our life resembles a payment which we 
receive in nothing but copper-pence, and which, at 
last, we must, after all, receipt. The pence are the 
days; death, the receipt. For, at last, time makes 
known the sentence of nature's judgment upon the 
worth of all beings appearing in her, by destroying 
them: 

"And justly so; for all things, from the void 
Called forth, deserve to be destroj-ed ; 
'T were better, then, were nought created. 1 ' 

— Goethe. 



32 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

So, then, age and death, to which every life 
necessarily hurries, are the sentence of condemna- 
tion upon the will to live, passed by nature her- 
self, which declares that this will is a striving that 
must frustrate itself. " What thou hast willed," it 
says, "ends thus; will something better." The les- 
sons which each one learns from his life consist, 
on the whole, in this, that the objects of his wishes 
constantly delude, shake, and fall, consequently, 
bring more torment than pleasure, until, at length, 
even the whole ground and floor upon which they 
all stand gives way, inasmuch as his life itself is 
annihilated. Thus he receives the last confirma- 
tion that all his striving and willing were a blun- 
der and error: 

Then old age and experience, hand in hand, 
Lead him to death, and make him understand, 
After a search so painful and so long, 
That all his life he has been in the wrong. 

But we will enter further into the particulars of 
the case, since these are the views in which I have 
met with most opposition. First of all, I have yet 
to give additional evidence for the negativity of 
every gratification, that is, of all enjoyment and all 
happiness, in opposition to the positiveness of pain, 
by the following: 

We feel pain, but not painlessness: we feel care, 
but not the absence of it; fear, but not security. 
We feel a wish as we feel hunger and thirst, but, 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 33 

as soon as it is satined, 'tis just as with the eaten 
morsel, which we feel no more the moment it is 
swallowed. Enjoyments and pleasures we miss pain- 
fully as soon as they fail us; but pains, even when 
they do not return, are not immediately missed, 
but are, at most, intentionally thought of by means 
of reflection. But only pain and want can be posi- 
tively felt, and, accordingly, announce themselves; 
well-being, on the other hand, is merely negative. 
For that very reason, we do not become aware of 
the three greatest boons of life — health, youth, and 
liberty, as such — as long as we possess them, but 
only after we have lost them: for they, too, are 
negations. That days of our life were happy, we 
notice not until they have given place to unhappy 
ones. In the ratio in which enjoyments increase, 
susceptibility to them decreases; the habitual is no 
longer felt as an enjoyment. On this very account, 
susceptibility to suffering increases; for the absence 
of the customary is painfully felt. Thus, by posses- 
sion, grows the number of necessities, and hence 
the ability to feel pain. Hours pass away more 
rapidly when pleasant, and more slowly when pain- 
ful; because pain, not pleasure, is the positive, 
whose presence is felt. In like manner, we become 
aware of time during ennui, not during diversion. 
Both prove that our existence is then happiest when 
we feel it least; whence it follows that it were bet- 
ter not to have it at all. Great, lively joy can 
absolutely be thought of only as following great 



34 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

distress; for to a state of lasting contentment, noth- 
ing except some pastime or gratification of vanity 
can be added. Therefore, all poets are compelled 
to bring their heroes into fearful and painful situa- 
tions in order to be able to liberate them; drama 
and epic, accordingly, picture throughout only fight- 
ing, suffering, tormented human beings; and every 
novel is a raree-show, where we observe the spasms 
and convulsions of the agonized human heart. 
This aesthetic necessity, Walter Scott has naively 
laid down in the " Conclusion " to his novel, " Old 
Mortality." Entirely in accordance with the truth 
I have proved, Voltaire, so favored by nature and 
fortune, says, " Le bonheur n' est qu un reve, et la douleur 
est reelle;" and adds, u il y a quatre vingts am que je 
I'eprouve. Je n J y sais autre chose que me resigner, et me 
dire que les mouches sont nees pour etre mangees par les 
arraignies, et les homines pour etre divorees par les 
chagrins." ("Happiness is but a dream, and pain 
is real; .... for eighty years I have experienced 
it. All I can do is to resign, and tell myself that 
flies are born to be eaten by spiders, and men to 
be consumed by sorrows.") 

Before any one so confidently pronounces life a 
desirable good, and worthy of thanks, let him calmly 
compare the sum of all possible pleasures which 
a man can enjoy in his life with all the possible 
sufferings which can befall him in his life. I believe 
it will not be difficult to strike a balance. At 
bottom, however, it is entirely superfluous to dis- 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 35 

pute whether good or evil predominates in the 
world; for even the mere existence of evil decides 
the matter; since evil can never be canceled by- 
present or future good, consequently not balanced: 
" Mille piacer, non vagliono un tormento." — Petrarch. 
("A thousand pleasures are not worth one torment.") 
For, that thousands lived in happiness and delight, 
would never, surely, take away the anguish and 
* death-pang of a single one; and no more does my 
present well-being undo my former sufferings. 
Hence, even if there were a hundred times less evil 
in the world than is the case, nevertheless, its mere 
existence would be sufficient to establish a truth 
which may be expressed in different ways, although 
always somewhat indirectly, namely, that we are 
not to rejoice, but rather to mourn, over the exist- 
ence of the world; that its' non-existence is prefera- 
ble to its existence; that it is something which, at 
bottom, ought not to be, etc. Exceedingly beauti- 
ful is Byron's expression of the matter: 

" Our life is a false nature, — 'tis not in 
The harmony of things, this hard decree, 
This ineradicable taint of sin, 
This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree, 
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be 
The skies, which rain their plagues on men like dew — 
Disease, death, bondage — all the woes we see — 
And worse, the woes we see not — which throb through 
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new." 



36 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

If the world and life ought to be here for their 
own sake, and, therefore, need no justification, 
theoretically, and no indemnity or compensation, 
practically, but were here, about as Spinoza and the 
Spinozists of to-day represent it, as the sole mani- 
festation of a God, who, animi causa or to mirror 
himself, proceeded thus to evolve himself, and its 
existence, therefore, had no need of being justified 
by reasons, or redeemed by consequences; — then, 
I say, the sufferings and plagues of life would not 
have to be completely canceled by the joys and 
well-being in it ; since this, as said before, is 
impossible, because my present pain is never com- 
pensated for by future joys, as these fill their time 
like the former its time ; but there would have to 
be no sufferings at all, and also, death ought not 
to be, or have no terrors for us. Only in this wise 
would life pay for itself. 

But as our condition is far more something which 
had better not be, so all that surrounds us bear 
traces of it — as in hell everything smells of sulphur 
— in that everything is forever imperfect and 
deceptive, all pleasure has its alloy, every enjoy- 
ment is partial, every entertainment carries with it 
its drawback, every alleviation brings fresh trouble, 
every remedy for our daily and hourly need leaves 
us in the lurch every moment, and refuses to act, 
the stair upon which we tread so' often breaks 
under us, nay, mishaps great and small are the 
element of our life, and we, in a word, resemble 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 37 

Phineus, all whose food the harpies soiled and 
rendered unpalatable.* 

Two remedies are applied to this : Firstly, 
evXafieia, i. e., prudence, foresight, sagacity; it is 
insufficient and fails utterly. Secondly, stoical 
equanimity, which disarms every disaster by being 
prepared for it, and disdaining everything : prac- 
tically, it becomes cynical resignation that prefers 
to cast of! once for all every remedy and allevia- 
tion. It makes dogs of us as it did of Diogenes in 
the' tub. The truth of the matter is, we must be 
miserable, and are. Moreover, the chief source of 
the most serious evils that can befall man, is man 
himself. Homo homiai lupus (the greatest enemy of 
man is man. — Pope). Who fixes his attention upon 
this, beholds the world as a hell surpassing Dante's 
in this that each one must be the other's devil; 
for which, indeed, one is better fitted than the 
other; fetter than all, however, an arch-devil- 
appearing in the shape of a conqueror who arrays 
several hundred thousand men against each other 
and cries out to them: "Suffering and Death are 
your destiny : now fire upon one another with guns 
and cannons." And they do it. As a rule, how- 
ever, injustice, extreme unfairness, severity, yea, 
cruelty, characterize the manner in which people 
treat each other: an opposite conduct is a rare 
exception. Hereupon, and not upon your false 

*A11 that we grasp offers resistance, because it has its own 
will that must he subdued. 



38 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

theories, rests the necessity of the state and legis- 
lation. But in all cases not within reach of the 
law, the regardlessness of his like peculiar to man, 
which arises from his boundless egotism, sometimes 
also from malice, immediately appears. How man 
deals with man, negro slavery, for instance, whose 
final object is sugar and coffee, shows. But we need 
not go so far: to enter at the age of five a woolen or 
other factory, and thereafter daily sit in it ten, later 
on twelve, finally, fourteen hours, and do the same 
mechanical work, is dearly buying the pleasure 1 of 
breathing. But this is the fate of millions, and 
many other millions have an analogous fate. 

The rest of us, however, trivial accidents can make 
completely unhappy; completely happy, nothing in 
the world. Whatever may be said to the contrary, the 
happiest moment of the happiest mortal is still the 
moment he falls asleep, as the unhappiest moment 
of the unhappiest mortal, the moment he wakes up. 
An indirect, but certain, proof for the fact that people 
feel, consequently, are unhappy, is furnished over- 
abundantly, by the intense envy dwelling in all, 
which is roused in all relations of life by every 
advantage whatever it may be and which cannot 
hold back its poison. Because they feel unhappy, 
they cannot bear the sight of a supposed happy 
one : he that feels happy for a moment } will at once 
desire to make all about him happy, and says: 

Que tout le monde id soit heureux de ma joie. (May 
every one be happy with me.) 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 39 

If life in itself were a valuable possession and 
decidedly preferable to non-existence, the gate need 
not be occupied by such terrible guards as death 
and its terrors. But who would persevere in life 
as it is, if death were less frightful? And who 
could even so much as endure the thought of 
death, if life were a joy? However, death carries 
with it still the good of being the end of life, and 
we console ourselves about the sufferings of life 
with death and about death with the sufferings of 
life. The truth is that both belong inseparably 
together, forming a coil of error, a return from 
which is as difficult as it is desirable. 

If the world were not something, which, practi- 
cally expressed, ought not to be, it would also not 
be a problem, theoretically : much rather, its existence 
would either need no explanation at all, it being 
so self-evident that astonishment or questions about 
it could arise in no mind, or its object would be 
unmistakable. Instead of this, however, it is an 
insolvable problem, as the most perfect philosophy 
will always contain an unexplained element, like 
an insolvable precipitation or the remainder which 
the irrational ratio of two quantities always leaves. 
Therefore, when one dares put the question, why 
not, rather than this world there were nothing, the 
world does not justify itself; no reason, no final 
cause can be found in it, nor can it be proved that 
it is here for its own sake, that is, for its own 
advantage. In accordance with my doctrine, this, 



40 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

of. course, is to be explained from the fact that the 
principal of its existence is expressly a groundless 
one, namely, blind will to live, which, being the 
thing per se, cannot be subject to the principle of 
sufficient reason, which is merely the form of 
appearances, and by which alone each why is justi- 
fied. This agrees with the constitution of the 
world: for only a blind, not a seeing, will could 
have placed itself in the position in which we find 
ourselves. A seeing will would quite soon have 
made the estimate that the business does not cover 
expenses, since so powerful a struggling and striv- 
ing, with the exertion of all powers by continual 
care, anguish, and want, and with the inevitable 
destruction of every individual life, find no indem- 
nity in the existence thus gained, so ephemeral 
and coming to nought. For this very reason, the 
explanation of the world from an Anaxagorean 
rove, that is, from a will guided by cognition, neces- 
sarily, for its palliation, demands optimism, which, 
afterward, in spite of the loud testimony of a whole 
world full of misery, is set up and defended. Life 
is then proclaimed a gift, while it is clear as day, 
that if each one could have previously inspected 
and tried the gift, he would most respectfully 
have declined its acceptance. Lessing admired the 
understanding of his son, who, because he had not 
the least desire to enter the world, had to be drawn 
into it with forceps, but scarcely entered, absconded 
in haste. In answer to this, it is sometimes said 



THE MISERY OE LIFE. 41 

that life, from beginning to end, is intended to be 
a lesson; to which every one could reply: "On 
that very account I would I had been left in the 
quiet of all-sufficient nought, where I needed neither 
lessons, nor anything else." Add to this that he 
must some day give account of every hour of his 
life, he is much more entitled to demand reasons 
for having been removed from that quiet into so 
dubious, dark, agonizing, and painful a position. 
To this, then, do false fundamental views lead us. 
For human existence, far from possessing the 
character of a gift, has altogether that of a con- 
tracted debt, whose collection appears in the shape 
of the pressing necessities, tormenting wishes, and 
endless distresses caused by that existence. To the 
payment of this debt, as a rule, the whole life-time 
is devoted; but thereby only the interest is paid; 
death pays the principal. — And when was this debt 
contracted? In generation. 

Accordingly, if we look at man as a being whose 
existence is a punishment and an atonement, . we 
view him in a truer light. The myth of the fall 
of man (although, probably, as all Judaism, taken 
from the Zend-Avesta: Bun-Dehesch, 15), is the 
only one in the Old Testament to which I can 
concede a metaphysical, though merely allegorical, 
truth; indeed, it is the only one that reconciles me 
to the Old Testament. To nothing else does our 
existence bear such a great resemblance as to the 
result of a false step, a punishable desire. New 



42 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

Testament Christianity, whose ethical spirit is that 
of Brahmanism and Buddhism, therefore very 
foreign to the otherwise optimistic spirit of the Old 
Testament, has, very wisely, directly begun with 
that mythus: indeed, without this, it would not 
have found a point of attachment at all in Judaism. 
If one wishes to estimate the degree of guilt with 
which our existence itself is infected, behold the 
suffering inseparable from it. Every great pain, 
be it physical or mental, shows clearly what we 
deserve: for we would not suffer, if we did not 
deserve it. That also Christianity views our exist- 
ence in this light, is testified by a passage from 
Luther's Commentaries on the Galatians, Ch. 3, which 
I have only in Latin: " Sumus autem nos omnes cor- 
poribus et rebus subjecti Diabolo, et hospites sumus in 
munch, cujus ipse princeps et Deus est. Ideo panis, 
quern eclimus, potus quern bibimus, vestes, quibus utimur, 
imo aer et totum quo vivimus in came, sub ipsius 
imperio est." ("All of us, moreover, in body and 
possessions, are subject to the Devil, and we are 
sojourners in a world of which he himself is chief 
and lord. So the bread we eat, the water we 
drink, the clothes we wear, nay, even the air and 
all which gives us sustenance is under his sway.") 
They have cried out against the melancholy and dis- 
consolateness of my philosophy; it lies, however, only 
in this, that I, instead of fabling a future hell as 
an equivalent for sin, proved that, where guilt 
exists in the world, there is already something 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 43 

resembling hell; who denies this, may some day 
experience it himself. 

And to this world, this arena of tormented and 
agonized beings, who subsist only by devouring 
one another, where, therefore, every wild beast is 
the living grave of a thousand others, and its self- 
preservation a series of deaths by torture; where, 
with cognition, the susceptibility to pain increases, 
which, on that account, reaches its highest degree 
in man, and a higher degree in proportion to his 
intelligence, — to this world they have attempted to 
aclnpt the system of optimism, and to demonstrate 
it as the best of all possible worlds. How glaring 
the absurdity ! However, an optimist bids me open 
my eyes and gaze upon the world, so beautiful in 
the sunlight, with its mountains, valleys, streams, 
plants, and animals. But, then, is the world a 
panorama? These things, of course, are beautiful 
to behold; but to be one of them is altogether 
different. Then comes a teleologist and praises the 
wise arrangement which provides that the planets 
do not rush together; land and sea are not reduced 
to a pulp, but kept nicely apart; all is not benumbed 
by continual frost nor roasted by heat; likewise, in 
consequence of the obliquity of the ecliptic, there 
is no eternal spring, since thus nothing could come 
to maturity. But these and all similar things are 
simply conclitiones sine quibus non. If there is to be 
a world at all, if its planets are to exist at least 
long enough for a ray of light from a remote fixed 



44 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

star to reach them, and not, like Lessing's son, scud 
off immediately after birth, — then, of course, it 
durst not be framed so unskilfully that the very 
scaffolding threatened to collapse. But if one pro- 
ceeds to the' results of that lauded work, contem- 
plates the players who act upon the so durably 
framed stage, and then sees that with sensibility 
pain sets in and increases in proportion to the 
intelligence, that then, keeping pace with this, lust 
and suffering become more and more prominent, 
until, at last, human life offer| no other material 
than for tragedies and comedies, then, who does 
not play the hypocrite, will hardly be disposed to 
sing hallelujahs. The real, but concealed, origin of 
the latter has, moreover, been unsparingly, but 
with triumphant truth, disclosed by David Hume, 
in his Natural History of Religion, Sects. 6, 7, 8, 
and 13. He also lays bare, in the tenth and 
eleventh books of his Dialogues on Natural Religion, 
with arguments very cogent, and yet very different 
from mine, the sad condition of this world and the 
untenableness of all optimism; on this occasion he 
also attacks the latter in its origin. Both works of 
Hume are as worthy of being read, as they are 
unknown in Germany to-day. Here, patriotically, 
they find incredible satisfaction in the disgusting 
jargon of native, ordinary minds, and proclaim them 
great men. Those Dialogues, however, Hamann 
translated, Kant revised the translation, and even in 
old age urged Hamann's son to publish them, because 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 45 

Platner's edition was unsatisfactory. (Vide. Kant's 
Biography, by F. W. Schubert, p. 81-165.; From 
every page of David Hume there is more to be 
learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's, and Schleier- 
macher's complete philosophical works put together. 
The founder of systematic optimism is Leibnitz, 
whose merits as a philosopher I do not intend to 
deny, although I never succeeded in thoroughly 
grasping the monadology, preestablished harmony, 
identitas indiscernibilium. His Nouveaux Essais sur 
V entendement, however, are merely an excerpt from 
Locke, with a detailed, but weak critique, intended 
to correct his justly world-renowned work, which 
he here opposes with as little success as he opposes 
Newton by his Tentamen de motuum coelestium causis, 
directed against his theory of gravitation. Against 
this Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy, the Critique of 
Pure Reason is especially directed, and stands to 
it in a polemic, nay, annihilating relation; as 
to Locke and Hume, in one of continuation and 
development. That, at the present day, professors 
of philosophy are everywhere anxious to set Leib- 
nitz with his blunders on his feet again, yes, to 
glorify him, and to esteem Kant as little as possible, 
has its good reasons in the primum vivere. The 
Critique of Pure Reason, namely, does not allow 
one to give out Jewish mythology for philosophy, 
or to talk familiarly of the soul as of a given 
reality or a well known and well accredited person, 
without giving account of how one came to this 



46 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

idea, and what authority one has to use it scien- 
tifically. But primum vivere, deinde philosophari ! 
Down with Kant, vivat our Leibnitz ! But to return 
to this one, I can concede no other merit to the 
Theodicy, this methodical and broad unfolding of 
optimism, as such, than that of having given rise, 
afterward, to the immortal Candide of the great 
Voltaire, in which, indeed, the oft-repeated, lame 
excuse of Leibnitz for the evils of the world, namely, 
that bad sometimes leads to good, found an unex- 
pected support. By the very name of his hero, 
Voltaire indicated that uprightness alone was 
necessary to recognize the opposite of optimism. 
Truly, on this theatre of sin, of suffering, and of 
death, optimism cuts such a strange figure, that it 
would seem to be irony, had we not a sufficient 
explanation of its origin, in its secret source, so 
amusingly disclosed by Hume, as above mentioned 
(namely, feigning flattery, with insulting confidence 
in its success). 

To the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibnitz, 
that this is the best of all possible worlds, the proof 
that it is the worst of all possible worlds, may 
seriously and honestly be opposed. For possible 
does not mean what one may idly fancy, but what 
can really exist and endure. Now, this world is 
so constituted as it had to be in order to barely 
exist. Consequently, a worse world, since it could 
not exist, is not possible" at all; this very one, 
therefore, is the worst possible. For, not only if 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 47 

the planets should collide, but also, if of the really 
occurring perturbations of their course, anyone, 
instead of gradually adjusting itself by another, 
should continue to augment, the world would soon 
come to an end. Astronomers know upon how 
accidental circumstances, namely, mostly upon the 
irrational relation of the periods of rotation, this 
depends, and have laboriously figured out that it 
may all end well; hence, the world can just about 
maintain its place. We hope, although Newton 
was of an opposite opinion, that they have not 
made a mistake, and therefore the mechanical 
perpetuum mobile, realized in such a planetary 
system, do not, like the others, cease to move. Under 
the firm rind of the planet rage the mighty forces 
of nature, which, as soon as an accident gives them 
free play, must destroy it with all living beings. 
This has occurred to our planet at least three 
times, and may frequently happen again: An earth- 
quake of Lisbon, of Hayti, a destruction of Pompeii, 
are merely petty allusions to the possibility. A 
trifling change in the atmosphere, chemically not 
even noticeable, causes cholera, yellow-fever, black- 
death and the like, which carry off millions; any 
greater change would extinguish all life. A very 
moderate rise in the temperature would dry up all 
the rivers and springs. Animals have been endowed 
with organs and powers barely enough to suffice 
for providing themselves with the means of sub- 
sistence and for rearing their young; so that when 



48 THE MISERY OF LIFE 

an animal 'loses a limb, or only the complete use 
of it, it must in most cases die. Even of the human 
race, however powerful tools it may have in the 
shape of understanding and reason, nine-tenths 
live in continual battle with want, forever on the 
verge of destruction, maintaining themselves above 
it with difficulty and exertion. So, throughout, to 
the continuance of the whole as well as to that of 
each individual, the conditions are given niggardly 
and meagerly, but nothing more. Therefore, indi- 
vidual life passes in an incessant struggle for 
existence; while at every step destruction threatens. 
Just because this threat is so often executed, pro- 
vision had to be made by means of the incredibly 
great surplus of germs, that the destruction of the 
individuals might not lead to that of the genera, 
in which alone nature takes serious interest. The 
world is consequently as bad as it possibly can be 
and exist at all. q. e. d.- The petrifaction of the 
entirely different genera of animals formerly inhab- 
iting the planet, furnish as verification the documents 
of worlds whose existence was no longer possible. 
These, consequently, were somewhat worse than the 
worst of all possible worlds. 

Optimism is at the bottom the unwarrantable 
self-praise of the true originator of the world, the 
will to live, which complacently mirrors itself in 
its work; accordingly, it is not only a false, but 
also a pernicious, doctrine. For it represents life 
as a desirable state, and, as its object, the happiness 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 49 

of man. With this in view, each one then believes 
he has the justest claim to fortune and enjoyment; 
but if, as usually happens, these do not fall to his 
lot, he believes that he is wronged, nay, that he 
misses the object of his existence; while it is much 
more correct to consider (as Brahmanism and 
Buddhism, and also genuine Christianity do), as the 
object of our life, work, privation, distress, and 
suffering, crowned by death; because these lead to 
the denial of the will to live. In the New Testa- 
ment the world is represented as a vale of tears, 
life as a purifying process, and an instrument of 
torture is the symbol of Christianity. Accordingly, 
when Leibnitz, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Pope 
stepped forward with optimism, the offense generally 
taken was that optimism was incompatible with 
Christianity; this, Voltaire, in the preface to his 
excellent poem, "Le desastre de Lisbonne" which 
likewise is expressly directed against optimism, 
relates and explains. What puts this great man, 
whom I, in opposition to the revilings of venal 
German scribblers, so gladly praise, decidedly above 
Rousseau, inasmuch as it testifies the greater depth 
of his thought, is his insight into three truths: 
1. The great preponderance of evil and wretched- 
ness, by which he is deeply permeated; 2. The 
strict necessitation of the acts of the will; 3. Locke's 
principle, that possibly the thinking faculty may 
also be material; while Rousseau contests all this, by 
declamations in his " Profession de fed du vicaire 



50 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

Savoyard" a flat, Protestant parson-philosophy. He 
also, in the same spirit, combats the just-mentioned 
beautiful poem of Voltaire with a perverted, shallow, 
and logically false ratiocination in favor of opti- 
mism, in his long letter to Voltaire of the 18th of 
August, 1756, devoted to this special purpose. 
Indeed, the fundamental trait and grand mistake 
of Rosseau's whole philosophy is, that in place of 
the Christian doctrine of hereditary sin and the 
original depravity of the human race, he assumes 
an original goodness and unlimited perfectibility y 
which has gone astray only with civilization and 
its consequences. Upon this he founds his opti- 
mism and humanism. 

As Voltaire, in the Candide, wages war in his playful 
manner with optimism, so does Byron, in his im- 
mortal masterpiece, Cain, in his serious and tragic 
manner. For this, he has been glorified by the 
invectives of the obscurantist Frederick SchlegeL 
Finally, in order to corroborate my view, were I 
to cite the sayings of all the great minds of all 
times who were opposed to optimism, there would 
be no end of quotations, as almost every one of 
them has expressed his recognition of the wretch- 
edness of this world in strong terms. Therefore, 
not to confirm, but merely to adorn, this chapter, 
a few expressions of this sort may find room at 
the end. 

First of all, it may be mentioned that the Greeks, 
strangers as they were to the Christian and Upper 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 51 

Asiatic views of the world, arid took decidedly the 
standpoint of affirming the will to live, were deeply 
impressed with the misery of existence. This is 
testified by the invention of tragedy, which is due 
to them. Another voucher is furnished by the 
custom of the Thracians to welcome the newly-born 
with lamentations, and to mention all the evils 
which he was to encounter; on the contrary, to bury 
the dead with joy and jests, because he was at last 
free from so many great sufferings; which reads 
thus in a beautiful verse preserved by Plutarch 
(De audiend. poet, in fine): 

Tor qivvra ^prjvELv, eiS otf epx £rai kaka. 
Tor S'av Sarovzra kai itovGov 7t£7Cav/ueyov 
XaipovraS evcprj/uovvTaS ek7te/x7t£iv douoov. 

"They mourned the new-born child of earth, 
Embarking on life's stormy sea; 
But hailed its death with joy and mirth, 
Releasing it from misery." 

Not to any historical connection, but to the moral 
identity of the matter, is it to be attributed, that 
the Mexicans welcomed the newly-born with the 
words: "My child, thou art born to endure: there- 
fore, endure, suffer, and be silent." And following 
the same feeling, Swift (as Walter Scott relates in 
his life) had early adopted the habit of keeping 
his birthday as a time, not of joy, but of sadness, 
and of reading on that day that passage in the 
Bible in which Job mourns over and curses the 



52 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

day when it was said' in his father's house: "A son 
is born." 

Well known, and too long to copy, is the passage 
in the Apology of Socrates, where Plato makes this 
wisest of mortals say that death, even if it robbed 
us forever of consciousness, would be a wonderful 
gain, since a deep, dreamless sleep were preferable 
to any day, even of the happiest life. 

A saying of Heraklitos runs thus: 

Top ovv (hep ovoua /uev fiioi, epyor 8e SavaroS. 
"Life ideed, we call life; in reality, it is death." 

Famous is the beautiful stanza- of Theognis: 

Af>xV v 1 UEV M 7 ? tpvvai Eitix^ovioiQiv apidrov, 
Mt]8 j eididsir avyaS oceoS ?/eXiov 
<Pvvra <5 ; oxcnS ooki6ra nvXaS Ai'dao 7t£pr/dai, 
Kai kEi6$ai noXXr/v yrjv £7taju?;6a/.ierov. 

"Not to be born — never to see the sun — 
No worldly blessing is a greater one! 
And the next best is speedily to die, 
And lapt beneath a load of earth to lie!" 

Sophocles in the Oedipus Colonos (1225), abbreviates 

this thus: 

Mr/ cpvvai zov catavra vi- 

Kqc Xoyov to d'ErtEi q>avri, 

firfvoa keiSev, o^ev nep r/kei, 

LToXv devzEpov, go? rccxi<Sra. 

" Not to have been born at all is superior to every 
view of the question; and this, when one may have 



THE MISERY OF LIFE. 53 

seen the light, to return thence, whence he came, 
as quickly as possible, is far the next best." 
Euripides says: 

LTa% d'odvvrfpoS fiioi av^poD7toDv, 
K J ovk e6ti itovoav avartavdiS. 

"But the whole life of man is full of grief, 
Nor is there rest from toils." 

Even Homer has said it: 

"For ah! what is there of inferior birth 
That breathes or creeps upon the dust of earth, 
What wretched creature, of what wretched kind, 
Than man, more weak, calamitous, and blind?" 

Pliny says: Quapropter hoc primum quisque in 
remediis animi sui habeat, ex omnibus bonis, quae homini 
natura tribuit, nullum melius esse tempestiva morte — 
(Hist. Nat, 28, 2). " Let each then reckon this as 
one great solace to his mind, that of all the bles- 
sings which nature has bestowed on man, there is 
none greater than the death which comes at a 
seasonable hour. 

Shakespeare puts these words into the mouth of 
the aged King Henry IV. : 

" O heaven ! That one might read the book of fate, 
And see the revolution of the times, 

how chances mock, 

And changes fill the cup of alteration 

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen, 

The happiest youth, — viewing his progress through, 

What perils past, what crosses to ensue, — 

Would shut the book and sit him down and die." 



54 THE MISERY OF LIFE. 

Finally, Byron: 

"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
Count o'er thy days from anguish free, 
And know, whatever thou hast been, 
'Tis something better not to be. v " 

Baltazar Gracian, too, depicts the misery of ex- 
istence in the blackest colors in the Criticou, Parte 
1, Crisi 5, at the beginning, and Crisi 7, at the end, 
where he fully represents life as a tragic farce. 

No one, however, has treated the subject so thor- 
oughly and exhaustively as Leopardi, in our own 
days. He is wholly filled and permeated with it; 
everywhere the mockery and misery of this exis- 
tence are his theme; on every page of his works 
he represents them, but with such diversity of form 
and expression, with such wealth of illustration, 
that he never wearies, but rather entertains and 
stimulates us throughout. 




r ^m 



JIFflE JHBJFHPPY3IC3 ©F MYE. 



" Ikr Weisen lioch uad tief gelahrt, 

Die ihr's ersinnt unci wisst, 
Wie, wo unci wann sich Alles paart? 

Warum sich's liebt unci kuesst? 
Ihr hohen Weisen, sagt niir's an! 

Ergruebelt, was mir da, 
Ergruebelt mir, wo, wie und wann, 

Warum mir so geschah?" — Buerger. 

HIS chapter is the last of four, whose mani- 
fold, mutual relation, by virtue of which 
they form, to a certain extent, a subordinate 
whole, the attentive reader will recognize, without 
my being compelled to interrupt my discourse by 
appeals and references. 

Poets we are wont to see engaged chiefly in 
depicting love. As a rule, this is the principle 
theme of all dramatic works, be they tragic or 
comic, romantic or classic, Hindoo or European. 
Not less is it the subject-matter of by far the 
greater part of lyric as well as of epic poetry; 
especially, if we include under the latter the cart- 
loads of romances, which, for centuries, in all the 



56 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

civilized countries of Europe, every year produces 
as regularly as the fruits of the soil. All these 
works are substantially nothing but many-sided, 
brief or detailed, descriptions of this passion. Like- 
wise, the most successful delineations of it, as, for 
instance, Romeo and Juliet, The New Heloise, 
Werther, have achieved immortal glory. If, not- 
withstanding, Rochefoucauld supposes that it were 
with passionate love as with ghosts, all spoke of 
them, but none ever saw them, and also Lich ten- 
berg, in his essay " On the Power of Love," con- 
tests and denies the reality and naturalness of that 
passion: it is a great error. For it is impossible 
that something foreign to and contradicting human 
nature, consequently, a mere imaginary caricature, 
could, at all times, be indefatigably represented by 
poetic genius and received by humanity with un- 
changed interest; for without truth there can be 
nothing beautiful in art: 

"Rien rtest beau quele vrai; le vrai seul est aimable." 
"Nought is fair save the true; the true alone is 
lovely.'' 

Indeed, experience, though not the daily, con- 
firms that that which, as a rule, occurs but as a 
lively, still superable inclination, can, under cer- 
tain circumstances, increase to a passion surpassing 
all others in violence, then doing away with all 
considerations, overcoming all hindrances with in- 
credible strength and perseverance, so that for its 
indulgence life is unhesitatingly risked, nay, if such 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 57 

should absolutely be denied, even sacrificed. The 
Werthers and Jacopo Ortises exist not in ro- 
mances only, but every year there are to be 
found at least half a dozen of them in Europe; 
sed ignotis perierunt mortibus Mi: for their sufferings 
find no chronicler but the writer of official records 
or the reporter. Yet the readers of the police 
records in English and French daily papers will 
testify to the correctness of my assertion. Greater 
still is the number of those whom the same passion 
brings into the mad-house. Finally, each year can 
show up here and there a case of mutual suicide, 
where the loving couple have been hindered by 
external circumstances. However, I cannot under- 
stand why those who are assured of mutual love, 
and expect to find the highest bliss in its enjoy- 
ment, do not rather take the extremest steps and 
withdraw from all relations, instead of giving up 
with life a happiness than which they can conceive 
of no greater. But as far as the lower degrees and 
mere touches of that passion are concerned, we all 
have them daily before our eyes, and in our hearts, 
too, as long as we are not old. 

Accordingly, after what has been here recalled 
to mind, one cannot question either the reality or the 
importance of the subject. Therefore, instead of 
wondering that even a philosopher now makes this 
constant theme of all poets his own, one ought 
rather to wonder that a matter which plays such 
an important part throughout human life, has been 



58 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

hitherto scarcely at all taken into consideration by 
philosophers, and lies before us as raw material. 
More than all others, Plato, particularly in the 
Symposium and Phaedrus, has dealt with it; how- 
ever, what he states is within the range of myths, 
fables, and jests, and concerns, for the most part, 
Grecian boy-love. The little that Rousseau, in the 
" Discovers sur V inegalite (p. 96, ed. Bip.), says upon 
our theme is wrong and insufficient. Kant's dis- 
cussion of the subject, in the third chapter of the 
dissertation " On the Feeling of the Beautiful and 
the Sublime," is very superficial, and shows a lack 
of experience, and, therefore, is partly incorrect. 
Finally, Platner's treatment of the subject, in his 
Anthropology, every one will find flat and shallow. 
Spinoza's definition, however, on account of its 
wonderful naivete, deserves to be quoted for the 
reader's exhilaration: "Amor est titillatio, concomitants' 
idea causae externae." (Eth. IV., prop. 44, dem.) " Love 
is a tickling, with the concomitant idea of an ex- 
ternal cause." Predecessors, accordingly, I have 
neither to take advantage of nor to refute: the 
matter has forced itself upon me objectively, and 
entered, of its own accord, into the chain of my 
speculations. Moreover, I can hope for least ap- 
plause from those who are at the time swayed by 
this passion, and, accordingly, seek to express their 
overpowering feelings in the sublimest and most 
ethereal images; my view will seem too physical, 
too material, to them; metaphysical, nsij, trans- 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 59 

cendent, as it is in reality. May they previously 
consider that the being who to-day inspires them 
to madrigals and sonnets, had she been born eighteen 
years earlier, would win scarcely a glance from 
them. 

For all love, ethereally as it may demean itself, 
roots in sexual instinct alone, nay, is absolutely 
only a more closely denned, specialized, perhaps, 
even, in the strictest sense, individualized sexual 
instinct. If now, keeping this in view, we contem- 
plate the important part which love, in all its gra- 
dations and shades, plays, not only in dramas and 
romances, but also in the real world, where it, next 
to love of life, proves the strongest and most active 
of all incentives ; continually engages half the powers 
and thoughts of the younger portion of humanity; 
is the last goal of almost every human endeavor; 
gains influence over the most important affairs; 
interrupts at every hour the most serious occupa- 
tions; unbalances at times even the greatest minds; 
does not hesitate to enter importunely with its 
trash into the transactions of statesmen and the 
researches of scholars; knows how to put its love- 
letters and ringlets of hair even into ministerial 
port-folios and philosophical manuscripts; no less, 
daily contrives the saddest and most complicated 
quarrels; dissolves the most important relations; 
sunders the strongest ties; sacrifices sometimes life or 
health, sometimes wealth, rank, and happiness, nay, 
makes unscrupulous the otherwise honest; the hith- 



60 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

erto faithful, treacherous; accordingly, appears as a 
malevolent demon who is anxious to pervert, con- 
fuse, and overthrow all; — then we are prone to 
exclaim : to what end this noise ? to what end this 
driving, raging, anxiety, and distress ? Nothing is 
at stake but that every Jack may find his Jill;* 
why should such a trifle play so important a part, 
and unceasingly bring disturbance and confusion 
into the well-regulated affairs of life? 

But to the earnest searcher the spirit of truth 
gradually discloses the answer; it is no trifle which 
is at stake; on the contrary, the importance of the 
matter is fully adequate to the earnestness and 
ardor of this turmoil. The final purpose of all love 
intrigues, be they played in sock or buskin, is 
really more important than all the other aims of 
human life, and, therefore, fully worth the deep 
earnestness with which it is prosecuted. In fact, 
what is decided thereby is really nothing less than 
the character of the next generation. The dramatis 
persons who will appear when we have departed, 
are here, as regards their existence and constitution, 
determined by these frivolous love-affairs. As the 
existence (their existing at all) of those future per- 
sons is throughout conditioned by our sexual instinct 
in general, so their essence (what they are) is con- 
ditioned by individual selection in its gratification, 

*I dare not fully express myself here: the gentle reader 
must therefore translate the phrase into Aristophanic lan- 
guage. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 61 

that is, by love, and thereby, in every respect, 
irrevocably established. This is the key to the 
problem. In applying the key, we will learn to 
know it better, if we review the degrees of love, 
from the most fleeting inclination to the most pow- 
erful passion. We shall see that the difference 
arises from the degree of individualization in the 
selection. 

All the love-affairs of the present generation put 
together are, accordingly, mankind's serious med- 
itatio compositionis generationis futurae, e qua iterum 
pendent innumerae generationes. In this matter, not 
as in every other, is individual weal and woe at 
stake, but the existence and special constitution of 
the whole race in time to come. Accordingly, the 
will of the individual appears in a higher degree 
as the will of the genus. Upon this importance 
rest the pathetic and sublime of love-affairs, the 
transcendent of its raptures and griefs, which poets, 
for thousands of years, have not wearied of pictur- 
ing, since no theme can vie with this in interest; 
for it concerns the weal and woe of the genus, and 
stands to all others, which concern only the weal 
and woe of the individual, in the relation of body 
to surface. On this very account, it is so difficult 
to impart interest to a drama without love-affairs, 
and, otherwise, this theme is never exhausted, not 
even by daily use. 

That which in the individual consciousness man- 
ifests itself as sexual instinct in general, and without 



62 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

concentration upon a definite individual of the 
opposite sex, is per se and outside of the appear- 
ance purely the will to live. But that which 
appears in the consciousness as sexual instinct di- 
rected towards a particular individual, is per se the 
will to live as a certain definite individual. In 
this case, sexual instinct, though per se a subjective 
desire, knows very skillfully how to adopt the 
mask- of an objective admiration and so deceive the 
consciousness. For nature needs this strategem for 
her purposes. That in every case of love, however 
objective and of sublime a tinge as that admiration 
may appear, nothing but the generation of an indi- 
vidual of a certain, definite constitution is intended, 
is, in the first place, confirmed by this, that not 
returned love but possession, that is, physical enjoy- 
ment is the essential. Assurance of the former, 
therefore, is in no wise a consolation for the want 
of the latter; in such an extremity, indeed, many 
a one has shot himself. On the other hand, those 
deep in love are content with possession, that is, 
physical enjoyment, if they cannot obtain a return 
of love. For this, all forced marriages, as well as 
the favor of a woman, often bought, in spite of 
her aversion, with great presents or other sacrifices, 
nay, even cases of rape, vouch. That this particular 
child be born, is the true object of the whole love- 
romance, though unknown to the participants. The 
way and manner in which it is reached, is of sec- 
ondary importance. Loudly as the lofty and 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 63 

sentimental, and especially the enamored souls may 
here cry out against the stern realism of my view, 
they are, nevertheless, wrong. For is not the exact 
determination of the individualities of the next 
generation a much higher and worthier object than 
their overpowering feelings and supersensual soap- 
bubbles ? Nay, can there be an earthly aim greater 
or more important? It alone is adequate to the 
depth with which passionate love is felt, to the 
earnestness with which it appears, and to the im- 
portance which it attributes even to the trifles 
within its reach. Only by assuming this object as 
the true one, do the prolixities, the endless troubles 
and torments to obtain the beloved object seem 
commensurate to the matter. For it is the coming 
generation, in its entire individual determination, 
which, by means of that turmoil and anxiety, 
presses on into existence. Yes, it stirs even in the 
circumspective, determined, and capricious selection 
to gratify the sexual intinct, which is called love. 
The growing affection of two lovers is really already 
the life-will of the new individual whom they can 
and would like to beget; nay, even in the meeting 
of their yearning glances, his new life is kindled 
and manifests itself as a future, harmonious, well- 
organized individual: they feel a longing for a real 
union and amalgamation into a single being, to 
henceforth continue to live only in this one. This 
is fulfilled in the offspring, in whom the qualities 
inherited from both, amalgamated and united, are 



64 THE METAPHYSICS OE LOVE. 

perpetuated. Conversely, the mutual, decided, and 
constant aversion between a man and maiden is 
an indication that what they could beget would be 
an ill-organized, unharmonious, unhappy being. 
Therefore, there is a deep meaning in Calderon's 
calling the atrocious Semiramis the daughter of 
the air, but introducing her as the child of rape, 
after which follows the murder of the husband. 

But, finally, what draws two individuals of op- 
posite sex with such violence towards one another 
is the will to live representing itself in the whole 
genus, which here anticipates an objectivation of its 
being, corresponding to its purposes, in the indi- 
vidual which the two can beget. This individual 
inherits from the father the will or character; from 
the mother, the intellect; the physique, from both; 
though, generally, the shape takes after the father, 
the size, after the mother, — in accordance with the 
law which is revealed in hybrids. Inexplicable as is 
each ones distinctive individuality, and exclusively 
peculiar as it is to him, so is also the peculiar 
and individual passion of two lovers, — yes, ulti- 
mately, both are one and the same thing. The 
former implies what is realized in the latter. As 
the very first origin of a new individual and true 
punctum saliens of its life must really be considered 
the moment that the parents begin to love one 
another; — to fancy each other, is a very striking- 
English expression, — and, as said before, in the 
meeting and fixing of their y earning 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 65 

the first germ of a new being, who, indeed, like 
most germs, is usually crushed. This new indi- 
vidual is, to a certain extent, a new Platonic idea; 
now, as all ideas strive with the greatest vehemence 
to become visible, seizing with desire the matter 
which the law of causality distributes among them, 
so, too, this special idea of a human individuality 
strives, with the greatest desire and violence, for its 
realization in an appearance. This desire and vio- 
lence is, in fact, the passion of the future parents 
for one another. There are innumerable degrees 
of it, whose extremes, may, if you will, be devoted 
as Aq>po§iT7] rtccvdrjiuLos and ovpavia, yet it is, essen- 
tially, the same everywhere. Moreover, according 
to the degree, it will be the more powerful the 
more individualized it is; that is, the more the be- 
loved individual, by virtue of all her parts and 
qualities, is exclusively fit to satisfy the wish and 
needs of the lover, which are determined by her 
own individuality. But what is here at stake will 
become clear to us further on. Primarily and 
essentially, amorous inclination is directed toward 
health, strength, and beauty, consequently, towards 
youth; because the will desires to represent, first of 
all, the generic character, this being the basis of all 
individuality, of the human species; every-day 
flirtation, Appodir?/ 7cavdr//nos, does not go much be- 
yond this. With this are connected more special 
demands, which we later will examine more partic- 
ularly, and with which, where they forsee satisfac- 



66 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

tion, passion increases. The highest degrees of this 
passion, however, arise from that fitness of both 
individualities for one another, by virtue of which 
the will, that is the character, of the father and the 
intellect of the mother, in their union, just com- 
plete that individual for which the will in general, 
which represents itself in the whole genus, feels a 
yearning commensurate with its own greatness, there- 
fore transcending the measure of a mortal heart, — a 
yearning whose motives lie beyond the reach of 
the individual intellect. This, then, is the soul of 
a real, great passion. The more complete the 
mutual fitness of the individuals in each of the 
manifold respects to be considered, the stronger 
will their mutual passion prove. Since there are 
no two persons exactly alike, to each particular 
man a particular woman must correspond most 
completely, — always with regard to the future 
child. Rare as the accident of their meeting is real, 
passionate love. However, the possibility of it be- 
ing ever present in all, its representation in the 
works of the poets is intelligible to us. Just be- 
cause the passion of love is properly concerned 
with the offspring and his qualities, and here its 
nucleus lies, there can be friendship between two 
young and well-educated persons of opposite sex 
by virtue of the harmony of their disposition, 
character, and mental proclivities, without sexual 
love interfering. Nay, in this respect there can 
exist between them even a certain aversion. The 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 67 

reason for this is, that the child would, physically or 
mentally, have unharmonious qualities; in short, 
his existence and constitution would not be ade- 
quate to the purposes of the will to live as repre- 
sented in the genus. In the opposite case, with 
heterogeneity of disposition, of character, and of men- 
tal inclination, and with the aversion, nay, animosity, 
resulting therefrom, love can still arise and exist; 
where it then blinds them to all, so that, if it 
misleads them to marriage, it becomes a very un- 
happy one. 

But now to a more thorough examination of the 
matter. Egoism is such a deep-rooted property of 
all individuality that, to arouse the activity of an 
individual being, only egoistic motives can be re- 
lied upon with safety. To be sure, the genus has 
an earlier, nearer, and greater right to the individual, 
than the perishable individuality itself; neverthe- 
less, when the individual ought to be active, and 
even offer sacrifice for the continuance and consti- 
tution of the gen us, the importance of the matter 
cannot be made so clear to his intellect, which is 
intended merely for individual purposes, that he 
would act in accordance with it. Therefore, in such 
a case, nature can gain her purpose only by im- 
planting in the individual a certain illusion, through 
which that appears as a benefit to himself, which 
is, in truth, one for the genus only; so that he 
serves the latter while supposing that he serves 
himself. In this process, a mere chimera, imme- 



08 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

diately disappearing, floats before him, and as a 
motive takes the place of a reality. This illusion 
is instinct. In most cases, it may be looked upon 
as the sense of the genus, which represents to the 
will whatever subserves it. But because the will 
has here become individual, he must be deceived 
in such a manner that he may behold through 
sense of the individual what the sense of the genus 
presents him; that is, fancy to prosecute individual, 
while, in truth, he prosecutes generic, aims — this 
word here taken in its full sense. The external 
appearance of instinct we observe best in animals, 
where the part it plays is most significant; but the 
internal process we can, like everything internal, 
learn to know only in ourselves. However, it is 
supposed that man has scarcely any instinct, or, 
at all events, only that of seeking and taking, when 
a babe, the mother's breast. But, in fact, we have 
a very definite, distinct, even complex, instinct, 
namely, the fine, earnest, and capricious selection 
of the other individual. With this gratification, as 
such, that is, so far as it is a sensual enjoyment, 
resting upon an urgent necessity of the individual, 
the beauty or ugliness of the other person has 
nothing whatever to do. The regard for this, so 
zealously pursued, together with the careful selec- 
tion arising therefrom, evidently does not refer to 
the chooser himself, although he supposes it to be 
the case, but to the true object,— the offspring,— in 
whom the type of the genus is to be preserved as 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 69 

genuine and correct as possible. By a thousand 
physical accidents and moral repugnances, there 
arise many kinds of degeneration of the human 
form; nevertheless, the genuine type is, in all its 
parts, restored; which is brought about under the 
guidance of the sense of beauty, that throughout 
leads the sexual instinct, and without which this 
would sink into a repulsive want. Accordingly, every 
one, in the first place, will decidedly prefer, and 
eagerly desire, the most beautiful persons, that is, 
such in whom the character of the genus is most 
purely expressed; secondly, he will demand from 
the other individual especially those perfections 
which he himself lacks; yes, even find beautiful 
those imperfections that are opposed to his own. 
Therefore, small men seek large women; blondes 
love brunettes, etc. The giddy rapture which seizes 
a man at the sight of a woman of beauty suited 
to him, and pictures to him a union with her as 
the highest good, is that very sense of the genus, 
which, recognizing its clearly expressed .stamp, 
would like to perpetuate the genus with this stamp. 
Upon this decided inclination for beauty rests the 
preservation of the type of the genus: therefore, it 
acts so forcibly. We will, farther on, treat the con- 
sideration which it follows. What here leads man, 
is really an instinct which is intended for the best 
of the genus, while man imagines that he is seek- 
ing only his own greater enjoyment. In fact, we 
here have an instructive revelation of the inner 



70 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

essence of all instinct, which, throughout, as in this 
instance, puts the individual to work for the good 
of the genus. For manifestly the care with which 
an insect seeks a certain flower, or fruit, or dung, 
or flesh, or, as the ichneumon seeks a strange 
insect-larva to lay its eggs there, and, to attain this, 
heeds neither toil nor danger, is very analogous to 
the care with which a man selects for sexual grat- 
ification a woman of definite character, adapted to 
him, and so eagerly strives to possess her, that 
often, in order to reach this end, he sacrifices, in 
spite of all reasons, his life's happiness by a foolish 
marriage, by love intrigues which cost him fortune, 
honor, and life, even by crimes, as adultery or rape, 
and all merely in order to serve, in accordance 
with the everywhere sovereign will of nature, the 
genus in the most efficient manner, though at the 
expense of the individual. Everywhere instinct is 
working as though with a purpose, and yet entirely 
without one. Nature implants it, when the acting 
individual would be incapable of understanding 
or unwilling to prosecute the object: therefore, it is, 
as a rule, given only to beasts, and especially to the 
lowest, who have least understanding; but almost 
only in the case here considered, also to man, who 
could, indeed, understand the object, but would 
not prosecute it with the necessary zeal, that is, 
even to the detriment of his own individual well- 
fare. Thus, here as in all instinct, truth assumes 
the shape of illusion in order to influence the will. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 71 

A voluptuous illusion it is, deluding man, that he 
will find in the arms of a woman of beauty pleas- 
ing him, greater enjoyment than in those of any 
other; or even an illusion fixed exclusively upon 
a single individual, which firmly convinces him 
that her possession will yield him overpowering 
bliss. Accordingly, he imagines it is for his own 
enjoyment that he wastes trouble and makes sacri- 
fices, while he does so merely to preserve the regular 
type of the genus, or even that a particular indi- 
viduality, which can be born only from these parents, 
may come to life. So completely does the character 
of instinct, that is, a process as though with a 
purpose and yet entirely without it, here exist, 
that the one who is impelled by that illusion 
often even abhors, and would prevent the purpose, 
that is, generation, which alone influences him; 
namely, in almost all illicit amours. In accordance 
with the described character of the matter, after he 
has finally obtained satisfaction, every lover will 
experience a wonderful disappointment. He is 
amazed that what was desired so passionately 
accomplishes no more than any other sexual grat- 
ification. That wish stood to all his other wishes 
in the same relation as the genus stands to the 
individual; that is, as an infinite to a. finite. The 
gratification, however, benefits only the genus, and 
does not, therefore, come within the consciousness 
of the individual, who, here inspired by the will 
of the genus, serves, with self-sacrifice of every de- 



72 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

scription, a purpose not at all his own. Therefore, 
every lover, after the final completion of the great 
work, finds himself deceived: for the illusion has 
vanished, by means of which here the individual 
was the dupe of the genus. In accordance with 
this, Plato very strikingly says: tfoortf anccvroov 
aXa^ovedrarov. (Phil. 319). 

All this, however, on its part, reflects light upon 
the instincts of animals. Undoubtedly, they, too, 
are possessed of a kind of illusion which promises 
them pleasure, while they work so busily and with 
self-denial for the genus. The bird builds its nest; 
the insect seeks a fitting place for its eggs, or even 
hunts for prey, which, unpalatable to itself, must 
be laid with the eggs as food for the future larvse. 
The bee, the Wasp, the ant, apply themselves to 
their artificial structures and to their highly com- 
plex economy. All of them are certainly guided 
by an illusion which conceals the service of the 
genus under the mask of an egoistic motive. This 
is probably the only way of making comprehensi- 
ble to ourselves the iwnner or subjective process 
which lies at the bottom of the manifestations of 
instinct. Outwardly, however, or objectively, we 
find, in animals strongly swayed by instinct, a pre- 
ponderance of the ganglionic, or subjective nervous 
system over the objective, or cerebral system. From 
this may be concluded that they are impelled, not so 
much by an objective, proper apprehension, as by 
subjective representations, which arouse desire, that 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 73 

arise through the influence of the ganglionic system 
upon the brain. Hence, they are influenced by a 
certain illusion. This seems to be the physiological 
process in all instinct. As a farther illustration, I 
may mention as another, though weaker, example 
of instinct, the capricious appetite of those enceinte. 
It seems to arise from the fact that the nourish- 
ment of the embryo demands, at times, a peculiar 
and definite modification of the blood flowing to 
it; whereupon the food that is to effect such a 
modification, at once represents itself to the mother 
as an object of strong desire, so that an illusion 
arises. Accordingly, woman has one instinct more 
than man. The ganglionic system, too, is more 
developed in woman. From the great excess of 
brain in man, it is to be explained that he has fewer 
instincts than animals have, and that even those 
few can easily be misled. Namely, the sense of 
beauty, instinctively guiding the selection for sexual 
gratification, is misled when it degenerates into a 
propensity to pederasty. Analogous to this, the 
flesh-fly, musca vomitoria, instead of depositing her 
eggs, as her instinct prompts her, into decomposing 
meat, lays them into the blossom of arum clracun- 
culus, misled by the decaying odor of this plant. 
That an instinct wholly concerned with the off- 
spring lies at the bottom of all love, will gain entire 
certainty by a more minute analysis, from which, 
therefore, we cannot withdraw. First of all, it must 
be mentioned that, by nature, man is inclined to 



74 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

inconstancy, woman, to constancy, in love. A man's 
love sinks noticeably the moment it is satisfied. 
Almost every other woman moves him more than 
the one he possesses: he longs for a change. A 
woman's love, on the contrary, increases from that 
very moment. This is the consequence of the pur- 
pose of nature, who intends to preserve and, there- 
fore, increase the genus as much as possible. 
For a man can conveniently beget more than a 
hundred children in a year, if as many women 
were at his disposal; a woman, however, with never 
so many men, could bear but one child in a year 
(omitting twin-births). Therefore, he always looks for 
other women; she, however, clings to the one she 
has: for nature impels her to preserve, instinctively 
and without reflection, the provider and defender 
of the future brood. Accordingly, conjugal fidelity 
is artificial to man, natural to woman; and so, 
woman's adultery, objectively, on account of the 
consequences, as well as subjectively, on account 
of its unnaturalness, is far more unpardonable than 
man's. But to be thorough, and gain the full con- 
viction that the delight in the other sex, objective 
as it may appear to us, is merely masked instinct, 
that is, the sense of the genus striving to preserve 
its type, we must even examine more closely the 
considerations which guide us in this pleasure, and 
enter into particulars, strange as the latter may 
figure in a philosophical work. These considera- 
tions are divided into those which concern imme- 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 75 

diately the type of the genus, that is, beauty; into 
those which concern physical qualities; and lastly, 
into those merely relative, which arise from the 
necessary and mutual correction and neutralization 
of the one-sidedness and abnormities of the two 
individuals. We will examine them singly. 

The primary consideration guiding our choice 
and inclination is the age. On the whole, it is 
effective from the years of beginning to those of 
ending menstruation. However, we give decided 
preference to the period from the eighteenth to the 
twenty-eighth year. Outside of those years, no 
woman can excite us; an old woman arouses our 
disgust. Youth without beauty, still has its charm; 
beauty without youth, none. Manifestly the pur- 
pose here unconsciously guiding us is the possi- 
bility of generation itself: therefore, all persons lose 
in charm for the other sex in the measure in which 
they depart from the period best adapted to gen- 
eration or conception. The second consideration is 
health. Acute diseases disturb only temporarily; 
chronic diseases, or even cachexy, repel, because 
the child inherits them. The third consideration 
is the skeleton, because it is the basis of the type 
of the genus. Next to old age and disease, nothing 
so repels us as a deformed figure; even the most 
beautiful face is no compensation for this defect. 
Moreover, the ugliest features, when accompanied 
by a symmetrical bod} r , are absolutely preferred. 
Furthermore, we are most sensitive to every dis- 



76 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

proportion of the skeleton, as, for instance, a stunted, 
short-legged figure, et al., also a limping gait, where 
it is not the result of an accident. On the other 
hand, a strikingly beautiful stature can compensate 
all defects: it bewitches us. Here may be men- 
tioned the great stress which is laid upon a small 
foot: the reason is that this is an essential char- 
acteristic of the genus, for no animal has tarsus and 
metatarsus, taken together, so small as man; which 
is connected with his upright gait; he is a planti- 
grade. In accordance with this, Jesus Sirach (26- 
33) says: "A well-built woman with beautiful feet 
is like golden pillars on silver pedestals." The 
teeth, too, are important; because they are essential 
to nutrition, and especially inheritable. The fourth 
consideration is a certain plumpness, that is, a prom- 
inence of the vegetative function, plasticity, prom- 
ising the foetus rich nourishment; therefore, undue 
leanness strongly repels us. A full female bosom 
has an uncommon charm for the male sex; because, 
standing in direct connection with her propagative 
functions, it promises the newly-born plenty of 
nourishment. Moreover, excessively fat women arouse 
our disgust; the cause of it is that such a consti- 
tution indicates atrophy of the uterus, that is, 
barrenness; which is known, not by the mind, but 
by instinct. The very last consideration is beauty 
of features. Here, too, the bony parts are the most 
important consideration. A beautiful nose is espe- 
cially attractive, while a short, pug nose mars all. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 77 

The life's happiness of innumerable girls has been 
decided by a slight upward or downward curve of 
the nose; and rightly: for the type of the genus is 
at stake. A small mouth, as caused by small 
maxillaries, is very essential, being a specific char- 
acteristic of the human face in opposition to the 
mouths of beasts. A sunken, as it were, cut-away 
chin is particularly repugnant, because mentum pro- 
minulum is exclusively a trait of our species. Lastly, 
is the consideration of beautiful eyes and forehead: 
they are connected with the psychical, especially the 
intellectual, qualities which are inherited from the 
mother. 

The unconscious considerations which govern the 
choice of women, we can, of course, not give so 
accurately. On the whole, the following may be 
maintained. Their choice is given to men of from 
thirty to thirty-five years of age; and, indeed, they 
prefer them to youths, although these represent 
the highest human beauty. The reason is, that 
they are guided, not by taste, but by instinct, 
which recognizes this age as the acme of generative 
power. In general, they care little for beauty, 
especially of the face: it appears that they take it 
upon themselves to bestow beauty upon the child. 
They are won principally by man's strength and the 
courage allied to it: for these promise generation of 
strong children and, at the same time, a brave de- 
fender of them. Every bodily defect of man, every 
deviation from the type, woman, as far as the child 



78 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

is concerned, can remove in generation by being 
perfect in those parts herself, or even excelling in 
the opposite direction. Those qualities alone are 
to be excepted which are peculiar to his sex, and 
which, therefore, the mother cannot give to the 
child; to these belong the masculine build of the 
skeleton, broad shoulders, narrow hips, straight legs, 
muscular power, courage, beard, etc. Thence it 
comes that women often love ugly men, but never 
an unmanly man; because they cannot neutralize 
his defects. 

The second class of considerations which lie at 
the foundation of love, are the psychical qualities. 
Here we find that woman is attracted throughout 
by the qualities of his heart or character, — since 
they are inherited from the father. Preeminently, 
it is firmness of will, determination, and courage, 
perhaps, too, honesty and kindness of heart, which 
win women. Intellectual parts, however, exercise 
no direct and instinctive power over her, for the 
reason that they are not inherited from the father. 
Lack of brains is of no consequence to a woman; 
rather, excessive mental power, or even genius, being 
an abnormity, may operate unfavorably. Therefore, 
we often see an ugly, stupid, and rude man cut out 
a well-bred, talented, and amiable man. So, too, 
love-marriages are often concluded between intellec- 
tually very heterogenous beings; e. g., he, rude, 
strong, and narrow-minded; she, tender, sensitive. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 79 

discriminating, well-bred, aesthetic, etc.; or, he, even 
genial and learned ; she, a goose : 

Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares 
Fornias atque aninios sub juga aenea 
Saevo mittere cum joco. 

The cause of it is that here not intellectual, but 
entirely different, considerations predominate — those 
of instinct. The object is not intellectual entertain- 
ment, but the generation of children: it is a union 
of hearts, not of heads. It is a vain and ridiculous 
pretence of women to assert that they have fallen 
in love with a man's mind, or it is the overstrain- 
ing of a degenerate being. Men, on the other hand, 
are not influenced, in instinctive love, by the quali- 
ties of a woman's character. Therefore, so many a 
Socrates has found his Xanfippe, as, for instance, 
Shakespeare, Albrecht Duerer, Byron. Here, however, 
intellectual qualities have influence, because they are 
inherited from the mother. Yet their influence is 
easily overbalanced by physical beauty, as this, 
touching more essential points, acts more imme- 
diately. And so it happens that mothers, feeling 
or having experienced that influence, have their 
daughters learn fine arts, languages, etc., to make 
them more attractive to men; whereby they wish 
to assist the intellect by artificial means as well as, 
in case of need, the hips and bosom. It must be 
borne in mind, that here we are speaking only of 
that wholly direct, instinctive attraction which alone 



80 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

is the source of real love. That an intelligent and 
educated woman prizes understanding and talent 
in a man; that a man, after reasonable reflection, 
examines and considers the character of his bride, 
has nothing whatever to do with the matter here 
in question: such things establish a reasonable 
choice in marriage, but not passionate love, which 
is our theme. 

Hitherto, I have regarded only the absolute con- 
siderations, that is, such which apply to every one. 
I now come to the relative considerations which 
are individual, because they are intended to rectify 
the type of the genus, which is defectively repre- 
sented in them, to correct the deviations from it, 
which the very person of the chosen carries with 
himself, and thus to lead back to the genuine 
representation of the type. In such cases, there- 
fore, each one loves what he lacks. Starting from 
the individual constitution, and directed towards it, 
the choice resting upon such relative considerations 
is always much more definite, decided, and exclusive 
than the choice starting from merely absolute con- 
siderations. Therefore, the origin of real, passionate 
love, as a rule, will lie in these relative considera- 
tions, and only the origin of the common, lighter 
inclination, in the absolute considerations. In ac- 
cordance with this, regular, perfect beauties are not 
wont to kindle great passion. In order that a truly 
passionate inclination may arise, something that 
can be expressed only by a chemical metaphor is 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 81 

necessary: two persons must neutralize each other 
as acid and alkali to form a base. The conditions 
necessary for this are, in the main, as follows: 
First, all sexuality is one-sidedness. This one-sided- 
ness is more decidedly expressed and present in 
a higher degree in one individual than in another; 
therefore, in each one, it can be supplemented and 
neutralized better by one than by another individual 
of the opposite sex, because a one-sidedness indi- 
vidually opposed to his own is necessary to sup- 
plement the type of humanity in the new individual 
that is to be born, around whose make-up the 
whole matter turns. Physiologists know that mas- 
culineness and feminineness have innumerable de- 
grees, within which the former sinks to the repulsive 
gynander and hypospad&us, the latter rises to the 
enchanting androgyne: from both sides complete 
hermaphrodism may be reached, upon which stand 
individuals who, being midway between both sexes, 
are to be counted with neither, consequently, are 
unfit to procreate. To the neutralization of the 
two individualities by one another, there is, accord- 
ingly, required that the definite degree of his mas- 
culineness exactly correspond to the definite degree 
of her feminineness, in order that both one-sided- 
nesses may just balance one another. According^, 
the manliest man will seek the womanliest woman, 
and vice versa; and so each will seek the one indi- 
vidually corresponding to him in the degree of 
sexuality. Now, how far the necessary relation 



82 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

exists between the two, is instinctively felt by them 
and lies, together with the other relative considera- 
tions, at the bottom of the higher degrees of love. 
While, therefore, the lovers are pathetically speak- 
ing of the harmony of their souls, most generally 
the harmony of the offspring, and his perfection, is 
the kernel of the matter, and, manifestly, is of 
much more importance than the harmony of their 
souls, — which often, not long after marriage, dissolves 
into a glaring disharmony. To this are joined the 
further relative considerations which rest upon 
each ones endeavor to balance his weaknesses, de- 
fects, and deviations from the type by the other, 
lest they are perpetuated in the offspring, or even 
augment to real abnormities. The weaker a man 
is in muscular strength, the more will he be attracted 
by strong women. The same holds true with 
woman. But since woman is by nature endowed 
with less muscular power, she will, as a rule, give 
the preference to the stronger man. Furthermore, 
size is an important consideration. Small men 
have a decided inclination for large women, and 
vice, versa; and, indeed, in a small man, the predi- 
lection for large women will be the more passionate, 
in case he himself was begotten by a large father 
and remained small only through the influence of 
the mother; because he has inherited from the 
father the vascular system and its energy, which 
can supply a large body with blood; however, if 
his father and grandfather were small, that incli- 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 88 

nation will be less positively felt. The aversion 
that a large woman has for large men, is founded 
upon nature's intention to avoid too large a race, 
if it j with the powers to be imparted by this woman, 
would become too weak to live long. If, notwith- 
standing, such a woman chooses a large husband, 
perhaps in order to appear better in society, gen- 
erally, their posterity will suffer for the folly. 
Another very decided consideration is complexion. 
Blondes positively demand brunettes; but seldom 
is the opposite true. The cause of it is that blonde 
hair and blue eyes are a kind of sport, almost an 
abnormity: analogous to white mice, or, at least, to 
white horses. They are native to no other part of 
the world, not even to the countries near the poles, 
with the exception of Europe. Evidently, they 
issued from Scandinavia. By the way, it is my 
opinion that white skin is not natural to man; but 
that he has by nature a black or brown skin as 
our forefathers, the Hindoos; that, consequently, a 
white man never sprang directly from the bosom 
of nature, and that there is no white race, much 
as may be spoken of it, but that every white man 
has become bleached. Driven into the north, where 
he is a foreigner, where he exists only like an exotic 
plant, and in winter needs, like them, the hot- 
house, man, in the course of thousands of 
years, grew white. The Gypsies, a Hindoo tribe, 
who emigrated about four centuries ago, show the 
transition from the complexion of the Hindoos to 



84 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

our own. In love, therefore, nature strives to return 
to dark hair and brown eyes as the original type; 
white skin, however, has become a second nature, 
though not so much so that the brown color of 
the Hindoos is repulsive to us. Lastly, each one 
seeks in the several parts of the body the correc- 
tive of his own defects and deviations, and the 
more decided, the more important the part is. 
Therefore, snub-nosed individuals take an inex- 
pressible delight in hawk-noses: it is so with regard 
to all other parts. Men of excessively lank, long 
body and constitution, can find beautiful even an 
unduly compressed and shortened figure. Consid- 
erations of temperament operate analogously: each 
will prefer a temperament opposed to his Own; 
though only in so far as his own is a decided one. 
He who is very perfect in any one respect, seeks 
and loves, indeed, not imperfection in this particular 
respect, but is reconciled to it more easily than 
another; because he himself preserves the children 
from great imperfection in these parts. For instance, 
who is very white himself will take no offense at 
a yellowish color of the face: but one of the latter 
color will find dazzling whiteness divinely beautiful. 
The rare case of a man's falling in love with a 
positively ugly woman, occurs, when the exact 
harmony of the degree of their sexuality existing, 
all her abnormities are just the opposite, conse- 
quently, the corrective of his own. In such cases, 
love is wont to reach a high degree. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 85 

The deep earnestness with which we scrutinize 
every part of a woman's body, — she on her part 
doing the same, — the critical scrupulousness with 
which we scan a woman who begins to please us, 
the willfulness of our choice, the strained attention 
with which a bridegroom observes his bride, his 
caution to be deceived in no part, and the great 
stress which he lays upon all details in the essen- 
tial parts — all this fully corresponds to the import- 
ance of the object. For the child, during his whole 
life, will bear a similar part; for example, if the 
woman is but a little one-sided, this can easily 
burden her son with a hunch-back; and so in all 
other cases. Of course, there is no consciousness of 
all this; on the contrary, each one imagines he is 
making that difficult choice only in the interest of 
his own pleasure (which, in reality, cannot at all 
have a share in it). Nevertheless, taking for granted 
his own organization, he makes a selection entirely 
in the interest of the genus, to preserve whose type 
as purely as possible is the secret task. The indi- 
vidual here acts, without knowing it, as an agent 
for a higher, the genus: hence the importance that 
he attributes to things which as such would, nay, 
must be, wholly indifferent to him. There is some- 
thing very peculiar in the deep, unconscious 
earnestness with which two young people of different 
sex, who see themselves for the first time, look at 
each other; in the searching and penetrating glance 
they cast at one another; in the critical examina- 



86 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

tion, which all traits and parts of their persons 
must mutually undergo. Indeed, this scrutiny is 
meditation of the genius of the genus upon the indi- 
vidual possible through them, and the combination 
of his qualities. The intensity of their delight in, 
and longing for, one another, is determined by the 
result of that scrutiny. This desire, after having 
reached quite a height, may suddenly be quenched 
by the discovery of something which previously 
remained unnoticed. So, in all who are capable of 
generation, the genius of the genus meditates the 
coming race, whose composition is the great work 
with which Cupid, incessantly active, speculating, 
and pondering, is occupied. Compared with the 
importance of his great affair which concerns the 
genus and all coming generations, the affairs of indi- 
viduals, in their whole ephemeral totality, are very 
trivial: therefore, he is always ready to sacrifice 
them regardlessly. For he stands to them in the 
relation of an immortal to a mortal, and his interests 
to theirs as infinite to finite. Thus, conscious of 
managing affairs of a higher order than those which 
concern merely individual weal and woe, he is 
engaged in them with sublime indifference: in the 
rush of war, in the whirl of business, or in the 
raging of a plague, and prosecutes them in the 
solitude of the cloister. 

We saw in the above that the intensity of love 
grows with individualization, when we proved how 
it is possible for the physical constitution of two 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 87 

individuals to be such that, in order to restore as 
well as possible the type of the genus, one is the 
special and perfect supplement of the other. In 
this case, quite a passion arises, which, by the very 
fact that it is directed upon a single object, and 
only upon this, consequently, as though appearing 
in the special service of the genus, at once gains a 
nobler and sublimer tinge. On the other hand, 
mere sexual instinct is base; because, being with- 
out individualization, it is directed upon all, and 
strives to preserve the genus merely as regards 
quantity, without regard to quality. Now, however, 
individualization, and with it, intensity of love, can 
reach so high a degree that, without its gratifica- 
tion, all the good things of the world, nay, life 
itself, lose their worth. Then it is a wish becom- 
ing so violent that it surpasses all others; hence it 
prepares him for every sacrifice, and, in case fulfill- 
ment is inexorably denied, may lead him to insanity 
or suicide. Beside the unconscious considerations 
lying at the bottom of all passionate love, which have 
been heretofore mentioned, there must be others 
which we cannot perceive so clearly. We must, 
therefore, assume that here not only the organiza- 
tion, but also the will of the man and the intellect 
of the woman have a special appropriateness for 
one another, in consequence of which they alone 
can beget a particular individual, whose existence 
the genius of the genus here intends, for reasons 
which, as they lie in the essence of the thing per 



88 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

se, are inaccessible to us. Or, more strictly speak- 
ing: the will 'to live here wishes to objectivate itself 
in a certain definite individual who can be begotten 
by this father and this mother only. This meta- 
physical craving of the will per se has, at first, no 
other sphere of action in the chain of beings than 
the hearts of the future parents, who, accordingly, 
are seized with this desire, and now fancy they are 
wishing for their own sake what has merely a pur- 
pose for the present purely metaphysical; that is, 
lying outside of the chain of really existing things. 
Thus, the blind desire springing, from the fountain- 
head of all beings, the desire of the unborn child 
to enter life, it is, which appears as the strong 
passion of the future parents for one another; which 
considers everything save itself a trifle; in fact, an 
illusion without equal, by virtue of which a man 
in love would give. all the wealth in the world to 
sleep with this woman, who, in truth, accomplishes no 
more for him than any other woman. That, never- 
theless, nothing else is intended, is evident from the 
fact that this strong passion, too, as well as every other, 
dies away in its enjoyment, to the great astonishment 
of the participants. This passion is also quenched, 
when, on account of the woman's barrenness (aris- 
ing, according to Hufeland, from nineteen accidental 
constitutional defects), the real metaphysical pur- 
pose is frustrated; as daily occurs to millions of 
crushed germs, in whom the same metaphysical 
life-principle struggles to exist, wherein there is no 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 89 

other consolation, than that to the will to live there 
stands open an eternity of space, time, matter, and, 
consequently, an inexhaustible opportunity to return 
to life. 

An insight into this must have, though fugi- 
tively, floated before the mind of Theophrastus 
Paracelsus, who has not treated this theme, and to 
whom my entire train of thought is foreign, when 
he, in quite a different context and in his desul- 
tory manner, wrote the following remarkable utter- 
ance: u Hi sunt, quos Deus copulavit, ut earn, quae 
fait Uriae et David ; quamvis ex diametro (sic enim sibi 
humana mens persuadebat) cum justo et legitimo matri- 
monio pugnaret hoc. — sed propter Salomonem, qui aliunde 
nasci non potuit, nisi ex Bathseba, conjuncto David 
semine, quamvis meretrice, conjunxit eos Deus. (De vita 
longa, 1, 5.) " There are some united by God, as, 
for instance, the wife of Urias and David, although 
conflicting directly with a just and legitimate mar- 
riage (for this is the conviction of humanity). But 
for Solomon's sake, who could not have been born 
otherwise than from Bathsheba and David, though 
she was an adulteress, God joined them." 

Love's longing, if epos, in expressing which in 
countless forms the poets of all times are incessantly 
engaged, and do not exhaust the subject; nay, can- 
not do justice to it; — this longing which connects 
the possession of a certain woman with the idea 
of an infinite bliss and an unutterable grief with 
the idea that she cannot be his, — this longing 



00 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

and grief of love cannot take their origin from 
the. necessities of an ephemereal individual; but 
they are the sighs of the genius of the genus that 
here sees irreparable means of gaining or losing his 
purposes, and therefore deeply groans. The genus 
alone has infinite life, and hence is capable of infi- 
nite wishes, infinite gratifications, and infinite pain. 
But these are locked up in the narrow breast of a 
mortal; no wonder, then, that it would seem to 
burst, and can find no expression for the forebod- 
ing of infinite joy or of infinite woe. This, then, 
furnishes the material to all erotic poetry of a 
sublime cast, which, accordingly, scales heaven in 
metaphors transcending everything earthly. This 
is the theme of Petrarch, the material to the St. 
Preuxs, Werther and Jacopo Ortis, who otherwise 
could not be understood nor explained. For that 
esteem cannot rest upon intellectual, or at all upon 
objective, real merits of the beloved one; because, 
indeed, the lover is frequently but superficially 
acquainted with her, as was the case with Petrarch. 
The spirit of the genus alone is able to see at a 
glance of what value she is to the genus for its pur- 
poses. Likewise, great passions usually arise at 
first sight. 

"Who ever loved who loved not at first sight?" 

—Shakespeare, A. Y. L. /., III., 5. 

In this respect, there is a remarkable passage in 
the romance Guzman de Alfarache, by Mateo Aleman, 
which has been famous for two hundred and fifty 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 91 

years: u No es necessario, para que uno ame, que pase 
distancia de tiempo, que siga discurso, ni haga election, 
sino, que con aquella primera y sola vista, concurran 
junctamente cierta corresponds ntia. o consonancia o lo 
que aca solemos vidgarmente dear, una confrontation de 
sangre, a que por particular influxo suelen mover las 
estrellas. v "In order to love it is not necessary for 
much time to pass, or for him to reflect and make 
a choice, but only, that, at that first and single 
glance, a certain mutual fitness and harmony meet, 
or, what we, in common life, are wont to call a 
sympathy of blood, and which is wont to be favored 
by a peculiar influence of the heavenly bodies." 
And so, loss of the beloved one by a rival, or by 
death, is to the passionate lover a grief surpassing 
every other, just because it is of a transcendent 
nature; for it concerns him not as an individual 
only, but also attacks him in his essentia eterna, the 
life of the genus, in whose special will and com- 
mission he was here engaged. Therefore, jealousy 
is so tormenting and fierce, and relinquishing the 
beloved one, the greatest of all sacrifices. A hero 
is ashamed of all lamentation except in love; be- 
cause in this not he, but the genus, wails. In Cal- 
deron's Great Zenobia, there is, in the second act, a 
scene between Zenobia and Decius, who says: 

u Cielos, luego to me quieres? 
Perdiem cien mil victorias, 
Volvierame," etc. 



92 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

" O Heaven ! do you love me ! For this I would 
surrender a hundred thousand victories, would re- 
turn," etc. Here honor, which hitherto outweighed 
every interest, is driven from the field as soon as 
love, that is, the interest of the genus, comes into 
play and sees a decided advantage: for this is infi- 
nitely superior to every interest of mere individuals, 
no matter how important. Therefore, to it alone 
honor, duty, and faith, give way, after they have 
resisted every other, temptation, even the menace 
of death. So, too, we find, in private life, that con- 
science is nowhere found so seldom as in this 
matter: it is set aside sometimes by otherwise honest 
and just people, and adultery regardlessly com- 
mitted, when passionate love, that is, the interest 
of the genus, has taken possession of them. It seems, 
indeed, as though they believed themselves con- 
scious of a higher authority than the interest of 
individuals can ever lend, for the very reason that 
they act in the interest of the genus. Remarkable 
in this respect are the w T ords of Chamfort: "Quand 
nn homme et une femme out V un pour V autre une 
passion violente, il me semble toujours que, quelque soient 
les obstacles que les separent, un man, des parens, etc., 
les deux amans sont V un a V autre, de par la Nature, 
qu' Us tf appartiennent de droit divin, rnalgre les Ms et_ 
les conventions humanies." "When a man and a 
woman have a violent passion for one another, it 
always seems to me, whatever the obstacles separ- 
ating them may be, as husband, parents, that the 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 93 

two lovers are for one another by nature, that they 
belong to each other by divine right, in spite of 
human laws and conventions." Who would take 
offense at this, will have to be referred to the 
striking leniency which the Saviour in the Gospel 
observes toward the adulteress, as he takes for granted 
the same guilt in all present. From this stand- 
point, the greater part of the Decameron appears as 
a mere mockery and scoff of the genius of the 
genus at the down-trodden rights and interests of 
individuals. With equal ease, all differences of 
cast and all similar relations, when they are op- 
posed to the union of passionate lovers, are set 
aside and declared null and void by the genius of 
the genus, who, pursuing his purpose pertaining to 
endless generations, scatters like chaff such opinions 
and scruples of man. For the same deep-rooted 
reason, when the purposes of this passion are at 
stake, every danger is willingly brooked, and even 
the otherwise pusillanimous then becomes courage- 
ous. Likewise, in dramas and romances, we observe, 
with joy and sympathy, young people fighting for 
their love-affairs, that is, the interest of the genus, 
and gaining the victory over the old folks, who 
consider merely the welfare of individuals. For 
the efforts of lovers appear to us much more mo- 
mentous, sublime, and just, than any opposing 
them; as the genus is more important than the 
individual. Accordingly, the principal theme of 
nearly all comedies is the appearance of the genius 



94 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

of the genus and his purposes, which run counter 
to the personal interests of the characters repre- 
sented, and therefore threaten to undermine their 
happiness. As a rule, it is a success, which, being 
in accordance with poetic justice, satisfies the spec- 
tator, because he feels that the purposes of the 
genus surpass those of the individuals. Therefore, 
at the end, he confidently deserts the victorious 
lovers, sharing with them the illusion that they 
have established their own happiness, which, rather, 
they have sacrificed to the welfare of the genus, in 
opposition to the will of the cautious elders. In 
a few abnormal comedies, it has been tried to re- 
verse the matter and to achieve the happiness of 
the individuals at the expense of the purposes of 
the genus: but here the spectator feels the pain 
which the genius of the genus suffers, and is not 
consoled by the advantages which the individuals 
secure. -As examples of this class, I have in mind 
a few very well-known plays: La reine de 16 ans> 
and Le mariage de raison. In love-tragedies, where 
the purposes of the genus are frustrated, the lovers, 
who were its tools, usually perish together: as in 
Romeo and Juliet, Tancred, Don Carlos, Wallenstein, 
Bride of Messina. 

Human love furnishes often comic, oftentimes 
tragic, phenomena; both, because possessed of the 
spirit of the genus, man is now swayed by him 
and is no longer himself: thereby his actions be- 
come inappropriate to the individual. In the highest 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 95 

degrees of love, what gives his thoughts so poetic 
and sublime a tinge, even a transcendent and hy- 
perphysical turn, by virtue of which he seems 
altogether to lose sight of his true purpose, is, at 
bottom, due to the fact that he is now animated 
by the spirit of the genus, whose affairs are infi- 
nitely more important than all those concerning 
mere individuals, in order to lay, in its special 
commission, the foundation to the existence of an 
indefinitely long posterity, of this individual and 
definite constitution. Posterity can receive this 
only from him as father and his beloved one as 
mother. Otherwise it, as such, never enters life, 
while the objectivation of the will to live expressly 
demands its existence. It is the feeling that one 
is acting in affairs of such transcendent importance 
which exalts the lover above all earthly things, 
yea, above himself, and gives his very physical 
wishes such a hyperphysical dress, that love be- 
comes a poetic episode even in the life of the most 
prosaic. In the latter case, the affair at times has 
a comical aspect. This commission of the will, 
objectivating itself in the genus, is represented in 
the consciousness of the lover under the mask of 
anticipation of an infinite bliss, to be found in the 
union with this woman. In the highest degrees of 
love, this chimera becomes so gorgeous, that, in 
case she cannot be won, life itself loses all charms, 
and then appears so joyless, shallow, and unpala- 
table, that the disgust of it conquors even the ter- 



96 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

rors of death: hence it is sometimes voluntarily 
shortened. The will of such a man has been drawn 
into the whirlpool of the will of the genus, or, this 
has so gained the supremacy over the individual 
will, that, if the latter cannot be active for the 
genus, it disdains to be active for the individual. 
The individual is here too weak a vessel to bear 
the infinite longing of the will of the genus, con- 
centrated upon a certain object. In this case the 
issue is suicide; sometimes the double suicide of 
both lovers; unless nature, in order to save life, 
causes insanity, which then enshrouds with its veil 
the consciousness of that hopeless condition. No 
year passes by without proving, by several cases, 
the truth of this. 

Not only has unsatisfied passion frequently a 
tragic end, but also, when gratified, leads more often 
to unhappiness than to happiness. For its de- 
mands often conflict so strongly with the personal 
welfare of the interested, that they undermine it 
by being irreconcilable to his other relations, and 
destroying the plan of life built upon them. In- 
deed, love runs counter, not only to all external 
relations, but even to the individuality itself, b}^ 
throwing itself upon persons, who, outside of sexual 
relation, are hateful, despicable, nay, disgusting, to 
the lover. But so much more powerful is the will 
of the genus than the individual's, that the lover 
closes his eyes to all those repugnant qualities, 
overlooks all, misknows all, and forever unites him- 



THE METAPHYSICS' OF LOVE. 97 

self with the object of his passion. So completely 
is he blinded by that illusion, which, as soon as 
the will of the genus is fulfilled, vanishes and leaves 
behind a hated companion for life. Only from 
this can it be explained that we so often see reason- 
able, even distinguished, men united to dragons 
and matrimonial devils, and we cannot understand 
how they could have made such a choice. On this 
account, the ancients represented Amor as blind. 
Indeed, the lover can even recognize and bitterly 
feel the intolerable defects of the temperament and 
character of his bride, promising him a life of 
torment, and yet not be frightened: 

" I ask not, I care not, 
If guilt's in thy heart; 
I know that I love thee 
Whatever thou art." 

For, in reality, he is working not for his own, 
but for the cause of a third who is yet to be born; 
although he is possessed of the illusion that he is 
working for his own cause. But this very not- 
working-for one's own cause, which is everywhere 
the stamp of greatness, gives a tinge of the sublime 
also to passionate love, and makes it a worthy sub- 
ject of poetry. Finally, love and extreme hatred 
of the beloved one may exist together; therefore, 
Plato compared it to the love of wolves for sheep. 
This is the case, when a passionate lover, in spite 
of all efforts and entreaties, can, under, no condition, 
obtain a hearing: 



98 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

"I love and hate her." 

— Shakespeare, Gym., II., 5. 

The hatred of the beloved one which is then 
kindled, may excite him to murder her and then 
himself. A few examples of this class are wont to 
happen every year: they are to be found in the 
newspapers. Therefore Goethe's verse is very true: 

"Bei aller verschinsehten Liebe! beim hcellis'chen Eleinente! 

Ich wollt', ich wuesst' was oerger's class ich's fluchen kcennte I" 
"By all love ever rejected ! By hell-fire hot and unsparing! 

I wish I knew something worse, that I might use it for 
swearing!" 

It is indeed no hyperbole, when a lover denotes 
as cruelty the coldness of the beloved one and the 
pleasure of her vanity which takes delight in his 
sufferings. For he is under the impulse of an 
instinct, which, being related to the instinct of 
insects, forces him, in spite of all reasons, to prose- 
cute its purpose at all hazards, and regard every- 
thing else as secondary: he cannot desist. Not 
one, but many a Petrarch has lived, who was com- 
pelled to drag all his life unsatisfied longing of 
love, as fetters, as a block of iron on his foot, and 
to. heave his sighs in solitary forests, but only in 
that one Petrarch there dwelt poetic power; so that 
Goethe's beautiful verse is true of him : 

" Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Quaal verstummt, 
Gab mir ein Gott, zu sagen, wie ich leide." 

In fact, the genius of the genus everywhere wages 
war with the guardian geniuses of the individuals, 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 99 

is their persecutor and enemy, always ready to 
mercilessly sacrifice personal happiness in order to 
accomplish his purposes: indeed, the welfare of 
whole nations has at times become the victim of 
his humor: an example of this kind Shakespeare 
has given us in Henry YL, Part III., Act. 3, Sc. 
2-3. All this rests upon the fact that the genus, 
in which our being is rooted, has a nearer and 
earlier claim upon us than the individual; hence, its 
affairs take precedence. Feeling this, the ancients 
personified the genius of the genus in Cupid, a god 
who, in spite of his childish appearance, was a 
capricious, despotic demon, but nevertheless lord 
of gods and men: 

6v, S'oo Beoov rvpavvE k' 'av Spoon gov , EpaoS.' 

" Thou, tyrant of gods and men, Eros !" 
Murderous missile, blindness, and wings are his 
attributes. The latter indicate fickleness; which, 
as a rule, begins with disappointment, the result 
of gratification. 

Because this passion is founded upon an illusion 
representing that which is of value only to the 
genus, as valuable to the individual, the illusion 
must vanish after the purpose of the genus has 
been gained. The spirit of the genus, who took 
possession of the individual, liberates him again. 
Deserted by the spirit, he relapses into his original 
narrowness and poverty, and beholds with astonish- 
ment that, after such great, heroic, and infinite 
efforts, nothing more fell to his share of enjoyment 



100 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

than what every other sexual gratification yields: 
contrary to his expectations, .he finds himself no 
happier than before. He perceives that he has 
been the dupe of the will of the genus. There- 
fore, as a rule, a Theseus, when gratified, 
will desert his Ariadne. Had Petrarch's passion 
been satisfied, his song thenceforth would have be- 
come mute, as the bird's, as soon as it has laid 
its eggs. 

I may remark, by the way, that strongly as my 
metaphysics of love must displease those who are 
at the time swayed by this passion, nevertheless, 
if, against love reason can avail ought, the funda- 
mental truth disclosed by me, must, sooner than 
anything else, enable them to overpower it. But, 
no doubt, the words of the old comic poet will 
hold true: "Quae res in se neque consilium, neque 
modum habet ullum, earn consilio regere non potes." 
"That which in itself possesses neither reason or 
order, you cannot govern by reason." 

Love-marriages are concluded in the interest of 
the genus, not of individuals. The participants, it 
is true, imagine they are promoting their own 
happiness: but the real object they are entirely 
ignorant of, it being an individual whom they alone 
can beget. Brought together by this purpose, they 
ought henceforth to endeavor to get along with 
each other as well as possible. But very often the 
couple united by that instinctive illusion, which is 
the essence of passionate love, will be of the most 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 101 

heterogeneous character. This appears as soon as 
the illusion vanishes, as it needs must. Accord- 
ingly, love-marriages usually turn out unhappily: 
for, by them, the coming is cared for at the expense 
of the present generation. " Quien se casa por amoves, 
ha de vivir con dolores." "Who marries for love 
must live in grief," says the Spanish proverb. The 
opposite holds true of marriages concluded for the 
sake of convenience, generally according to the 
choice of the parents. The considerations here in- 
fluencing them, of whatever sort they may be, are 
at least real, and cannot disappear of their own 
accord. In this case, the happiness of the present 
generation is provided for, but, indeed, to the detri- 
ment of posterity ; still the former remains problem- 
atic. The man who, in marriage, looks more to 
money than to satisfy his inclination, lives more 
in the individual than in the genus; which is dia- 
metrically opposed to the truth; hence it appears 
contrary to nature, and rouses a certain contempt 
of him. A girl who, in opposition to the advice 
of her parents, refuses a man who is rich and not 
old. and ignores all consideration of convenience, in 
order to choose according to her instinctive incli- 
nation only, sacrifices her individual welfare for the 
welfare of the genus. But, for this very reason, a 
certain approbation cannot be denied her: for she 
has preferred the more important, and acted in the 
sense of nature, more nearly, of the genus, while 
the parents advised her in the sense of individual 



102 THE METAPHYSICS OE LOVE. 

egoism. Accordingly, it seems that, in marriages, 
either the individual, or the interest of the genus, 
must suffer. Usually, such is the case: for, that 
convenience and passionate love go hand in hand, 
is the rarest streak of luck. The wretched con- 
dition of most persons, physically, morally, and 
intellectually, may partially be caused by the fact 
that marriages are usually concluded, not from pure 
choice and inclination, but from all sorts of external 
considerations, and according to accidental circum- 
stances. But if, in addition to convenience, incli- 
nation is, to' a certain extent, taken into considera- 
tion, this is, as it were, a settlement with the genius 
of the genus. Happy marriages, we all know, are 
rare; because it lies in the nature of marriage 
that its principal object is not the present but the 
coming generation. However, I may acid for the 
consolation of tender and loving souls, that a feel- 
ing of very different origin is sometimes associated 
with passionate love; namely, real friendship, founded 
upon harmony of sentiments. Still, this friendship 
usually does not appear until sexual love has died 
out. This friendship will generally arise from the 
fact that the physical, moral, and intellectual qual- 
ities, which correspond to and supplement each 
other with regard to the child, will supplement one 
another also with reference to the individuals 
themselves, as opposite qualities of temperament 
and intellectual advantages; thereby, a harmony of 
sentiments is founded. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 103 

The entire metaphysics of love here treated stands 
in close connection with my metaphysics in general, 
and the light which it reflects upon this may be 
summed up in the following: 

We have learned, that, in the gratification of 
sexual instinct, the careful selection rising through 
innumerable gradations to passionate love, rests 
upon the very sincere interest which man takes in 
the special personal constitution of the coming 
generation. This most remarkable interest confirms 
two truths laid down in the preceding chapter: 
first, the indestructibility of man's being per se, 
which continues to live in the coining race. For, 
that lively and. eager interest, springing not from 
reflection and intention, but from the innermost 
trait and instinct of our being, could not exist so 
indestructibly and exercise so great power over 
man, if he were absolutely transitory, and a genera- 
tion really and entirely different from him, suc- 
ceeded him merely in point of time. Secondly, 
that his being per se lies more in the genus than in 
the individual. For, that ' interest in the special 
constitution of the genus, which is the root of all 
love-matters, from the most fleeting inclination to 
the most earnest passion is, after all, the most im- 
portant affair to each one; that is, the success or 
failure of which touches him most sensitively; 
hence it is preeminently called the affair of the heart. 
Likewise, for this interest, when it is expressed 
strongly and decidedly, every personal interest is 



104 THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 

neglected, and, when necessary, sacrificed. Thereby, 
then, man bears witness to the greater interest he 
'takes in the genus, than in the individual, and to 
the fact that he lives more immediately in the 
former than in the latter. Why, then, does the 
lover hang with perfect devotion on the eyes of 
his beloved one, and is ready to sacrifice anything 
for her sake. Because it is his immortal part that 
craves for her: only his mortal part it is that 
craves for ever} 7 thing else. 

That lively, or even fervent, longing concentrated 
upon a particular woman is, accordingly, an imme- 
diate pledge of the indestructibility of the kernel 
of our being and its persistence in the genus. How- 
ever, to take this persistence for something trivial 
and unsatisfactory, is an error arising from the fact 
that, under the persistence of the genus, we think 
nothing more than the future existence of beings 
similar to, but in no wise identical with, us; and 
this again, because, starting from the cognition 
directed to the external world, one considers only 
the outer forms of the genus as we intuitively ap- 
prehend it, and not its inner essence. But this 
very inner essence it is, which, as its kernel, lies at 
the bottom of our own consciousness; therefore, it 
is even more immediate than our consciousness 
itself, and, being the thing per se, free from the 
principle of individuation, is really the same and 
identical in all individuals, whether they are side 
by side or follow one another. Now this is the 



THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. 105 

will to live, the very thing which so urgently craves 
for life and persistence. Accordingly, it is safe from, 
and untouched by, death. But, furthermore, it can 
attain to no condition better than the present: 
whence it follows, that, while there is life, it is 
sure of the sufferings and death of individuals. 
To free it from this, is reserved for the denial of 
the will to live, by which the individual will tears 
itself away from the genus, and ceases to live in it. 

We lack all ideas, nay, all data, as to what it then 
is. We can but designate it as that which has the 
liberty to be or not to be will to live. In the latter 
instance, Buddhism designates it by the name of Nir- 
vana, whose etymology has been given at the close 
of chapter forty-one. It is that point »which forever 
remains inaccessible to all human cognition as such. 

When now, from the standpoint of this last con- 
sideration, we gaze upon the tumult of life, we 
behold all busied with its distress and evils, exert- 
ing all powers to satisfy the endless wants, and to 
ward off the manifold suffering, and still without 
daring to hope anything else than the very pre- 
servation of this tormented individual existence for 
a brief space of time. In the midst of all this 
turmoil, however, we behold the yearning glances 
of two lovers meeting; but why so secretly, timidly, 
and stealthily ? Because these lovers are the traitors 
secretly endeavoring to perpetuate all this distress 
and drudgery, that otherwise would reach a timely 
end; which they would wish to frustrate as their 
ancestors have formerly done. 



6E]Sinj5. 



l HAT manner of cognition, * from which all 
V^) genuine works of art, of poetry, and even of 
philosophy, originate, is, when preponderat- 
ing, designated by the name of genius. As the 
subject matter of this manner of cognition is the 
Platonic ideas, these, however, being conceived of 
not abstractly, but intuitively only, the essence of 
genius must consist in the perfection and energy 
of intuitive cognition. Corresponding to this, we 
hear such most emphatically pronounced works of 
genius as proceed immediately from intuition, and 
appeal to intuition, that is, the works of the plastic 
arts, and next, those of poetry, which imparts its 
intuitions through the imagination. Even here the 
difference between genius and mere talent is per- 
ceptible. The latter is an advantage lying more 
in the greater adroitness and acutenes of the dis- 
cursive than of the intuitive cognition. Who is 
endowed with it, thinks more rapidly and correctly 
than the rest. Genius, however, beholds an alto- 

* Described in "Welt als Wille imd Vorstellung." Vol. II., 
Chap. 29, 30. 



GENIUS. 107 

gether different world, though only by gazing deeper 
into the one lying before them as well, because the 
world is represented in his mind more objective, 
consequently, purer and clearer. 

The intellect, according to its destiny, is merely 
the medium of motives: accordingly, it originally 
sees no more in things than their relations to the 
will, — the direct, the indirect, the possible. In 
animals, where the motives are almost all direct, 
the matter is therefore most obvious: what does 
not concern their will, does not exist for them. 
Hence we sometimes see with astonishment that 
even sagacious animals do not notice something 
striking in itself, for instance, visible changes in 
our person or surroundings. In the normal man, 
the indirect and possible relations to the will are 
added, whose sum constitutes useful knowledge; 
but here, too, cognition is still concerned with 
relations. For this very reason, no quite purely 
objective picture of things is formed in the normal 
man; because his intuitive power, as soon as it is 
not spurred on and set in motion by the will, 
immediately relapses and becomes inactive, for it 
has not energy enough to conceive of the world, 
by its own elasticity, purely objectively and loithout 
a purpose. However, where this happens, where 
the representing power of the brain has such a 
surplus that a pure, distinct, objective picture of the 
outside world is formed without a purpose, — a picture, 
which is useless for the purposes of the will, and 



108 GENIUS. 

in the higher degrees, a hinderance, nay, which 
can even be an injury to them; — there at least 
the predisposition to that abnormity exists, which 
is denoted by the name of genius, indicating that 
here something foreign to the will, that is, to the 
real ego, as though it were a genius coming from 
the outside, seems to become active. But, to speak 
without a metaphor, genius consists in a develop- 
ment of the intuitive faculty considerably greater 
than is necessary for the service of the will, for which 
alone it was originally intended. Therefore, with 
strictness, physiology, could, in a certain measure, 
class such a surplus of brain-activity, and of brain 
itself, with the monstris per excessum, which, as is 
well known, it classes with the monstris per defectum, 
and those per situm mutatum. Genius, then, consists 
in an abnormal excess of intellect, which can find 
employment only by being directed upon existence 
in general; so that it is in the service of the whole 
human race, as the normal intellect in the service 
of the individual. To make the matter clearer, we 
could say: if the normal man is composed of two- 
thirds will and one-third intellect, then genius is 
two-thirds intellect and one-third will. This might 
further be illustrated by a chemical simile: the 
base and the acid of a neutral salt differ from one 
another in this, that, in each of the two, radical and 
oxygen stand in converse relation. It is a base or 
alkali, when the radical preponderates over the 
oxygen, and it is an acid when the oxygen pre- 



GENIUS. 109 

ponderates. In like manner, as regards will and 
intellect, the normal man and the genius are 
related. From this, then, arises between them a 
fundamental difference which is visible in all their 
being and actions, but especially becomes manifest 
in their achievements. While, however, that total 
opposition between chemical substances causes the 
strongest affinity and attraction for one another, 
rather the contrary is wont to happen among the 
human race. 

The first expression called forth by such a sur- 
plus of the power of cognition is shown generally 
in the most original and fundamental form of cog- 
nition, i. e., the intuitive, and causes the repetition 
of the latter in a picture: this is the origin of the 
painter and sculptor. In these, the path from the 
conception of the genius to the production of the 
artist is shortest: therefore, the form in which 
genius and its activity are here manifested, is 
simplest, and its description easiest. However, we 
have here explained the source, whence all genuine 
productions in every art, even in poetry and phi- 
losophy, take their origin, though the process is 
not so simple. 

Remember the result obtained in the first book, 
that all intuition is intellectual, and not merely 
sensual. Adding to this the former explanation and, 
at the same time, fairly considering that the philoso- 
phy of the last century designated the intuitive 
power of cognition by the name of " lower powers 



110 GENIUS. 

of the soul," we will not find it so wholly absurd, 
nor worthy of the bitter scorn with which Jean 
Paul, in his Preparatory School of ^Esthetics, quotes 
it, that Adelung, who had to speak the language 
of his age, placed genius in " a considerable strength 
of the lower powers of the soul." Great as are 
the merits of the above mentioned work of this 
admirable man, I must still remark, that wherever 
theoretical explanation and instruction in general 
are the object, a discourse continually affecting wit 
and crowded with similes, is hardly appropriate. 
It is intuition, to which primarily the real and 
true essence of things, though conditionally, is re- 
vealed. All ideas, all thought, are, indeed, mere 
abstractions, consequently partial representations 
from it, and have arisen merely by abstracting. 
All profound cognition, even real wisdom, roots in 
the intuitive apprehension of things; which has been 
considered in detail in the supplement to the first 
book. An intuitive apprehension has always been 
the generative process, in which every genuine work 
of art, every immortal thought received the spark 
of life: all original thinking is done in pictures. 
From ideas, however, arise the works of mere talent, 
merely reasonable thoughts, imitations, and gen- 
erally all that is destined only for present emerg- 
ency and contemporaries. However, if our intuition 
were always limited to the real presence of objects, 
its material would stand wholly under the sway 
of chance, which seldom presents things at the 



GENIUS. Ill 

right moment, seldom arranges them suitably, and 
usually offers them to us in very defective speci- 
mens. Therefore, imagination is needed, in order 
to complete, arrange, embellish, fix, and reproduce 
at pleasure all the significant pictures of life, as 
the purposes of a deeply penetrating cognition and 
of the significant work, by which it is to be im- 
parted, may require. Upon this rests the great value 
of the imagination, an indispensable tool to genius. 
For by means of it alone he is enabled, according 
to the requirements of the association of his sculp- 
turing, composing, or thinking, to bring before his 
mind every object or event in a lively picture, and 
so always draw fresh nourishment from the original 
fountain-head of all cognition, the real world. Who 
is gifted with imagination may, as it were, call 
forth ghosts, revealing to him, at the proper time, 
the truths which the naked reality of objects 
furnishes but feebly, rarely, and then usually im- 
portunely. He is related to the unimaginative as 
the fleet, nay, winged animal to the cockle, moored 
to its rock, that must wait for what chance may 
bring it. For the unimaginative knows none but 
the real, sensuous intuition: until it comes, he 
gnaws upon ideas and abstractions, that are at best 
but the shells and husks, not the kernel, of cog- 
nition. He will never accomplish anything great, 
except perhaps in ciphering and mathematics. The 
works of the plastic arts, and of poetry, as well as 
the performance of mimicry, can also be looked 



112 GENIUS. 

upon as means of replacing as much as possible 
the lack of imagination to the unimaginative, and 
of facilitating its use to those gifted with it. 

Although the peculiar and essential manner of 
the cognition of genius is the intuitive, nevertheless, 
its subject-matter is by no means the single objects, 
but the Platonic ideas expressed in them, the ap- 
prehension of which has been analyzed in the 
twenty-ninth chapter. It is a fundamental trait of 
genius always to see the general in the particular; 
while the normal man recognizes in single things 
only the single thing as such; for only as such it' 
belongs to that reality which alone interest his 
ivill, that is, stands in relation to it. The degree 
in which every one not merely thinks, but directly 
beholds, in a particular object, only this 'object, or 
something more or less general, up to the most 
general of the genus, is the measure of his approx- 
imation to genius. Corresponding to this, only the 
essence of things in general, the general in them, 
the whole, is the real subject-matter of genius: 
the investigation of the single phenomena is the 
field of talent, as in the real sciences, whose sub- 
ject-matter is throughout merely the relations of 
things to one another. 

What was shown at length in a preceding chap- 
ter, namely, that the apprehension of the ideas is 
thereby conditioned, that the thinking faculty be 
the pure subject of cognition, that is, the will must 
wholly disappear from the consciousness, must here 



GENIUS. 113 

be borne in mind. The pleasure we take in some 
of Goethe's songs, bringing the landscape before 
our eyes, or in Jean Paul's descriptions of nature, 
rests upon the fact that we then share the objec- 
tivity of those minds, that is, the purity with 
which in them the world as representation was 
severed and, as it were, wholly separated from the 
world as will. From the fact that the manner of 
cognition of the genius is essentially one purified 
from all will and its relations, it follows that his 
works arise not intentionally or willfully, but that he 
is led by a sort of instinctive necessity. What is 
Galled the stirrings of genius, the hour of consecra- 
tion, the moment of inspiration, is nothing but the 
liberation of the intellect, when the latter, for the 
time exempt from service to the will, does not now 
sink into inactivity or relaxation, but, for a short 
time, is active all alone, of its own accord. Then 
the intellect is of the greatest purity, and becomes 
the true mirror of the world: for, wholly separated 
from its origin, the will, it is now the world as 
representation itself, concentrated in one conscious- 
ness. In such moments, as it were, the soul of 
immortal works is begotten. On the other hand, 
in all intentional meditation, the intellect is not 
free; for the will leads it and prescribes its theme. 
The stamp of commonness, the expression of 
vulgarity, which is impressed upon most faces, 
consists really in this, that the strict subordination 
of their cognition to their will, the firm chain link- 



114 GENIUS. 

ing both together, and the impossibility arising in 
consequence to view things otherwise than in rela- 
tion to the will and its purposes, is visible upon 
them. On the contrary, the expression of genius, 
which forms the family resemblance of all highly 
gifted minds, lies in this, that the acquittal, the 
manumission of the intellect from the service of 
the will, the predominance of cognition over will 
may be clearly read upon them: and because all 
pain arises from will, cognition as such, however, 
being painless and serene; this gives to their lofty 
foreheads and contemplative gaze, which are not 
subject to the service of the will and its distress, 
that tinge of great, as it were, unearthly, hilarity, 
which at times breaks through and agrees very well 
with the melancholy of the other features, especially 
of the mouth. In this respect, it may be strikingly 
designated by the motto of Gordanus Bruno: u In 
tristitia hilaris, in hilaritate, tristis" "Joyous in sad- 
ness, sad in joy." 

The will, which is the root of the intellect, op- 
poses all activity of the intellect, except that which 
serves its purposes. Therefore, the intellect is capa- 
ble of a purely objective and profound apprehension 
of the external world, only when it is severed at 
least temporarily from its root. While the intellect 
is still united to it, it is of its own accord not at 
all capable of activity, but sleeps in lethargy, as 
often as the will (interest) does not awaken it and 
set it in motion. Where this is the case, it is in- 



GENIUS. 115 

deed very fit to recognize, in accordance with the 
interest of the will, the relations of things, as the 
prudent mind does, who must always be wide 
awake, that is, stimulated by the will; but, for this 
very reason, he is not able to apprehend the purely 
objective essence of things. For, his will and pur- 
poses make him so one-sided that he sees in things 
only what concerns them; the remainder, however, 
partly vanishing, partly entering the consciousness 
in a vitiated condition. For instance, a man travel- 
ing in fear and haste will behold the Rhine and 
its shores but as a cross-road, and the bridge over 
it as another. In the mind of the man who is 
occupied with his aims, the world appears like a 
beautiful landscape upon the plan of a battle-field. 
Of course, these are extremes taken for the sake of 
clearness: but every excitement of the will, how- 
ever slight, will cause a slight, though always 
analagous, corruption of cognition. In its true color 
and form, in its entire and true significance, the 
world can stand forth not until the intellect, rid of 
the will, floats free above objects and, without being 
influenced by the will, is still intensely active. Of 
course, this is opposed to the nature and destiny 
of the intellect, that is, it is, to a certain extent, 
contrary to nature, hence so very rare: but in this 
very thing lies the essence of genius, in which alone 
that condition occurs in a high degree and contin- 
uously, while in others only approximately and 
exceptionally. In this sense I take it when Jean 



116 GENIUS. 

Paul (Preparatory School of ^Esthetics, Par. 12) 
put the essence of genius in profound contemplation 
(Besonnenheit). For, the normal man is buried in 
the whirl and tumult of life, to which he is bound 
by his will: his intellect is wholly filled with the 
things and events of life: but of these things and 
of life in their objective significance he does not at 
all become aware; as a merchant on 'Change at 
Amsterdam perceives very well what his neighbor 
says, but does not hear the hum of the whole ex- 
change, resembling the roar of the sea and astound- 
ing the distant observer. Private affairs do not 
hide the world and the things themselves from the 
genius, whose intellect is severed from the will, 
that is, the person; but he becomes clearly aware 
of them, he perceives them as such in objective 
intuition: in this sense he is profoundly contemplative. 
It is this profound contemplation which enables the 
painter to reproduce faithfully on his canvas the 
nature which lies before him, and the poet to 
recall, by means of abstract ideas, exactty the reality 
once observed, and so give expression to it and 
bring it distinctly before our consciousness; like- 
wise, to express in words what others merely feel. 
Animals live without any contemplation; they have 
consciousness, that is, they are cognizant of their 
weal and woe, as well as of the objects causing it. 
But their cognition never becomes objective; it 
always remains subjective. All within its range 
seems to them a matter of course, and can, there- 



GENIUS. 117 

fore, never become an object of representation or a 
problem (object of meditation) to them. Hence, 
their consciousness is wholly immanent. ' Though 
not of equal, yet of related, nature, is the conscious- 
ness of the great mass of mankind, inasmuch as 
their perception of things and of the world remains 
predominantly subjective and immanent. They 
perceive the things in the world, but not the world; 
their own action and suffering, but not themselves. 
Now, as the clearness of consciousness increases in 
infinite gradations, profound contemplation appears 
more and more, and so, gradually, a point is reached 
where at times (though rarely, and then again in 
very different degrees of clearness) the thought 
flashes like lightning through the brain: "What 
is all this? or, what is its real nature?" The 
former question, in case it attains to great clear- 
ness and duration, will make the philosopher; and 
the latter, the artist or poet. The source of their 
high vocation, therefore, is the profound contem- 
plation, arising, primarily, from the clearness with 
which they become aware of the world and of 
themselves. Hence, they are the wide-awake. 
The whole process, however, arises from the fact 
that the intellect, by its preponderance, frees itself 
temporarily from the will, to which it is originally 
subject. 

The above reflections upon genius are supple- 
mentary to what has been put forth in the twenty- 
first chapter concerning the continually wider separation 



118 GENIUS. 

of Will and intellect, perceptible throughout the chain 
of beings. This separation reaches its highest de- 
gree in genius, where it attains to the complete 
release of the intellect from its root, the will, so 
that the intellect here becomes wholly free, where- 
by, for the first time, the world as representation 
arrives at complete objectivation. 

Still a few remarks touching the individuality of 
genius. Aristotle, according to Cicero (Tusc. 1, 33), 
has remarked that all geniuses were melancholy 
(omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse), which, no doubt, 
refers to the passage in Aristotle's Problemata, 30, 
1. Goethe, too, says: 

" Meine Dichtergluth war sehr gering, 
So lang ich dem Guten entgegenging : 
Dagegen brannte sie lichterloh, 
Warm ich vor drokencleni Uebel floli. 
Zart Gedicht, wie Regenbogen, 
Wird nur auf dunkeln Grund gezogen : 
Darum behagt dem Dichtergenie 
Das Element cler Melancholic" 

This is to be explained from the fact that, the 
will always reasserting its original sway over the 
intellect, this, under unfavorable personal circum- 
stances, more easily withdraws from them, because 
it gladly turns away from repulsive surroundings, 
as it were, to be diverted, and now turns with so 
much greater energy upon the strange outside 
world, that is, becomes more easily purely objec- 
tive. Favorable personal relations have the opposite 



GENIUS. 119 

effect. On the whole, however, the melancholy 
given to genius rests upon the fact that the will 
to live beholds the wretchedness of its condition 
the more distinctly, the brighter the intellect is 
which illumines it. The frequently noticed gloomy 
disposition of highly gifted minds has its symbol 
in Montblanc, whose peak is usually clouded: but 
when, at times, especially in early morning, the 
cloud-veil is rent, and now the mountain, red with 
sun-light, looks down upon Chamouni from its 
heavenly height above the clouds, then it is a sight 
at which all hearts open in their lowest depths. 
So, too, genius, usually melancholy, shows, at in- 
tervals, that peculiar hilarity possible to him alone, 
arising from the most perfect objectivity of mind, 
and floating like an aureole on his lofty forehead; 
"In tristitia hilaris, in hilaritate tristis." 

At bottom, all bunglers are such, because their 
intellect, still too firmly bound to the will, becomes 
active only when spurred on by the will, and hence 
remains entirely in its service. They are, there- 
fore, capable of none but personal purposes. Ac- 
cordingly, their paintings are bad, their poems in- 
sipid, their philosophemes shallow, absurd, and very 
often dishonest, when, by pious dishonesty, they 
wish to recommend themselves to superiors. Thus, 
all their doing and thinking are personal. They 
succeed at best in making their own the external, 
the accidental, and the unimportant, that is, the 
manner of foreign, genuine works, so that instead 



120 GENIUS. 

of the kernel, they grasp the husk ; but think 
they have achieved all, nay, to have surpassed 
those. If, in spite of everything, the failure be- 
comes manifest, many still hope to reach it at 
last by their good will. But their good will itself 
makes it impossible, because it aims merely at 
personal purposes : these men, however, can have 
no sincere interest in art, or poetry, or philosophy. 
The saying: they stand in their own light, may- 
well be applied to them. They do not suspect 
that only the intellect released from the sway 
of the will and all its projects, and so active of 
its own accord, inspires with true earnestness 
and enables to produce genuine works : and this 
is a blessing; otherwise they would drown them- 
selves. In morals, good will is everything ; but 
in art, nothing : where, as the very word indi- 
cates, nothing is valid save being able (konnen). 
In what a man is really earnest, — that is the 
final issue on which everything hinges. Nearly 
all persons are earnest exclusively in their own 
welfare and that of their kin ; therefore, are able 
to further this and nothing else ; just because no 
resolution, no voluntary and intentional exertion 
imparts or replaces, or, more properly, transfers 
the true, deep, real earnestness. For it always 
remains where nature has put it : without it, all 
can be but half accomplished. For the same 
reason, geniuses take but little care of their own 
welfare. As a leaden attachment always restores a 



GENIUS. 121 

body to that position which its center of gravity 
requires, so the true earnestness of a man always 
restores the power and attention of his intellect 
where his earnestness lies: anything else, man 
prosecutes without earnestness. Therefore, only those 
very rare, abnormal men, whose true earnestness 
]ies not in the personal and practical, but in the 
objective and theoretical, are able to apprehend 
the essential qualities of things and of the world, 
that is, the highest truths, and reproduce them 
in any way. For such an earnestness, not con- 
cerned with the individual, lying in the objective^ 
is something foreign to human nature, something 
unnatural, properly, supernatural : yes, without it, 
a great man is impossible, and, accordingly, his 
productions are then ascribed to a genius different 
from him, that takes possession of him. To such 
a man, his sculpturing, composing, and thinking 
are the end; to the others, a means. They seek to 
advance their own interests, and, as a rule, know well 
how to do it, for they accommodate themselves to 
their contemporaries, and are ready to serve their 
necessities and humors ; hence, they generally live in 
happy, whilst he often lives in very miserable cir- 
cumstances. For he sacrifices his personal welfare 
to the objective purpose : he can not do otherwise ; 
because his earnestness lies there. They do the 
opposite : therefore, they are little, but he is great. 
Accordingly, his work is for all time; but it is not 
usually appreciated until his own generation has 



122 GENIUS. 

passed away. They live and die with the time. 
In general, he only is great, who, in his works, 
whether practical or theoretical, seeks not his own 
interest, but prosecutes an objective purpose : he is 
nevertheless great, even when, in practical matters, 
his purpose is misunderstood, and, in consequence, 
should be a crime. That he does not seek to ad- 
vance his own interest, this makes him, under all 
circumstances, great. All action directed upon 
personal matters, however, is little; because the 
actor recognizes and sees himself only in his own 
infinitely small person. But the great man recog- 
nizes himself in everything and hence in the 
whole ; he lives not like the former in the micro- 
cosm only ; but even more in the macrocosm. 
Therefore, he takes an interest in the whole and 
endeavors to apprehend it, in order to represent, 
or to explain, or to practically influence it. For 
it is not foreign to him : he feels that it concerns 
him. On account of this extension of his sphere, 
he is called great. 

Accordingly, this sublime predicate is due only to 
the true hero in any sense, and to the genius: it de- 
clares that they, in opposition to human nature, 
sought not their own interest, lived not for themselves, 
but for all. It is evident that the great majority 
must always be little and can never become great; 
however, the reverse is impossible, namely, for one to 
be great continually, that is, always and at every 
moment: 



GENIUS. 123 

Derm aus Gemeinem ist der Mensch gemacht, 
Und die Gewohnheit nennt er seine Arnme. 

Every great man must, nevertheless, often be a 
mere individual, keep an eye upon himself only, and 
that is to be little. Hereupon rests the very true re- 
mark, that no hero remains a hero to his valet; but 
it does not follow that the valet does not know 
how to appreciate the hero,— which Goethe, in the 
Elective Affinities, serves up as a thought of Ottilie's. 

Genius is its own reward; for the best a man is, he 
must necessarily be for himself. " Who is born with 
a talent, to a talent, finds in it his fairest existence," 
says Goethe. When we look up to a great man of 
the past, we do not think : " How happy is 
he to be still admired by all of us," but: "How 
happy he must have been in the immediate enjoy- 
ment of a mind, by whose vestiges centuries are 
refreshed." Not in fame, but in what leads to it, lies 
the valuer and in the generation of immortal chil- 
dren, the pleasure. Hence, those who endeavor to 
prove the nothingness of posthumous fame from the 
fact that the possessor knows nothing of it, are to be 
compared to the sophist who wisely demonstrates to 
a man casting envious looks at a heap of oyster- 
shells in his neighbor's yard, their utter uselessness. 

In accordance with the above remarks about the 
nature of genius, it is contrary to nature, inasmuch 
as it consists in the emancipation of the intellect, 
whose real destiny is to serve the will, in order to be 
active of its own accord. Accordingly, genius is an 



124 GENIUS. 

intellect become unfaithful to its destiny. Upon this 
rest its concomitant disadvantages, to whose consider- 
ation we now pave the way, by comparing genius 
with less decided preponderance of intellect. 

The intellect of the normal man, firmly bound to 
the service of his will, hence really engaged with the 
reception of motives only, may be looked upon as 
the collection of wires, whereby each of these dolls is 
set in motion upon the world's theater. 'This is the 
cause of that dry, grave earnestness of most persons, 
which is surpassed only by that of animals, that 
never laugh. But the genius, with his unshackled 
intellect, may be compared to a living man playing 
together with the- great wire-dolls of the famous 
Milan puppet-show, who would among them be the 
only one perceiving all, and hence gladly separating 
himself for a while from the stage, in order to enjoy 
the play from the boxes : — this is the profound con- 
templation of genius. But even the very sensible 
and reasonable man, who might be called almost 
wise, differs from the genius very much ; in fact, 
his intellect keeps a practical direction, is intent 
upon the choice of the very best ends and means ; 
hence it remains in the service of the will, and is 
engaged in accordance with nature. The firm, 
practical earnestness, which the Romans called 
gramtas, presupposes that the intellect does not 
quit the service of the will in order to stray off 
to what does not concern it. Therefore, it does 
not permit that separation of intellect and will, by 



GENIUS. 125 

which genius is conditioned. The sagacious, nay, 
eminent mind, the one adapted to great achieve- 
ments in practical matters, is such from the very 
fact that the objects strongly move his will and 
spur him on to a restless research of their relations. 
His intellect, too, is thus firmly grown together 
with his will. Before the mind of the genius, 
however, there floats in his objective apprehension 
the appearance of the world, as something strange 
to him, as an object of contemplation, driving his 
will out of his consciousness. Around this point 
turns the difference between the ability to accom- 
plish deeds and to create toorlcs. The latter de- 
mands objectivity and depth of cognition, and 
presupposes a complete separation of will and 
intellect ; the former, however, requires the appli- 
cation of cognition, presence of mind, and deter- 
mination ; this requires the incessant activity of 
the intellect, in the service of the will. Where the 
bond between the intellect and will is sundered, 
the intellect, having forsaken its natural destiny, 
will neglect the service of the will. For instance, 
even in the distress of the moment it will assert 
its emancipation and cannot refrain from catching 
the picturesqueness of the surroundings, though 
they threaten the individual with danger. 
But the intellect of the reasonable and sensible 
man is ever on duty, intent upon the circum- 
stances, and their requirements : hence, the latter 
will, in all cases, resolve upon and execute what is 



126 GENIUS. 

proper to the occasion, consequently, never fall into 
any of those eccentricities, personal blunders, nay, 
follies, to which the genius is exposed, because his 
intellect remains not exclusively the leader and 
guardian of his will, but is more or less occupied 
with the purely objective. The opposite relation, 
in which these two entirely different kinds of 
ability, which have here been abstractly repre- 
sented, hold to one another, Goethe has depicted in 
the contrast between Tasso and Antonio. The 
much observed relation between genius and insan- 
ity rests principally upon that separation of 
intellect and will, which is essential to genius, 
though contrary to nature. However, this must 
by no means be ascribed to genius being accom- 
panied by less intensity of will ; for it is condi- 
tioned rather by a violent and passionate character; 
but the explanation of it is that the man distin- 
guished in practical matters, the man of deeds, has 
merely the whole and full measure of intellect 
necessary for an energetic will, while most people 
are defective even in this respect ; genius, however, 
consists in a wholly abnormal, real surplus of 
intellect, not necessary for the service of any will. 
For this reason, men of genuine works are a 
thousand times rarer than men of deeds. It is in 
consequence of that very abnormal surplus of 
intellect, that the latter obtains a decided suprem- 
acy, separates itself from the will, and now, 
forgetting its origin, is spontaneously active by its 



GENIUS. 127 

own power and elasticity ; whence arise the crea- 
tions of genius. 

Furthermore, the fact that genius consists in the 
activity of the free intellect emancipated from the 
service of the will, causes its productions to serve 
no useful purpose. Whether music, or philosophy, 
or painting, or poetry ; — a work of genius is of no 
practical benefit. Uselessness is characteristic of 
the works of genius : it is their title to nobility; 
all other works of man are intended to preserve 
or to alleviate our existence — with the single 
exception of the works of genius : they are here 
for their own sake and are, in this sense, to be 
looked upon as the blossom, or net profit, of 
existence. Therefore, our heart opens when we 
enjoy them : for then we rise above the heavy, 
earthly atmosphere of want. Analogous to this, 
we seldom see the beautiful joined with the useful. 
Lofty and beautiful trees bear no fruit : fruit trees 
are small, ugly cripples. Not the full garden rose, 
but the small wild, almost scentless, rose is fertile. 
The most beautiful buildings are not useful : a 
temple is no dwelling-place. A man of great and 
rare mental endowments, forced to follow a mere 
useful business, for which the commonest man is 
fitted, resembles a precious vase, adorned with the 
most beautiful paintings, which is used for kitchen 
purposes. To compare useful people with geniuses, 
is to compare bricks with diamonds. 

Accordingly, the merely practical man uses his 



128 GENIUS. 

intellect for what nature intended it, that is, to 
apprehend the relations of things, partly to one 
another, partly to the will of the individual.- 
Genius, however, uses it contrary to its destiny, to 
apprehend the objective, essential character of 
things. His mind, therefore, belongs not to him, 
but to the world, to whose enlightenment he will, 
in some way, contribute. Numerous disadvantages 
must result from this to the individual so favored. 
For his intellect will generally show those faults 
which are wont to be met with in every tool not 
used for what it was made. Primarily, it will be, 
as it were, the servant of two masters, as it quits 
at every opportunity the service for which it is 
destined, in order to prosecute its own ends ; 
whereby it often leaves the will in the lurch very 
importunely; so that the individual thus endowed 
becomes more or less unfit for life, nay, often 
reminds us, in its behavior, of insanity. Besides, 
on account of its increased power of cognition, it 
will see in things more the general than the par- 
ticular ; while the service of the will requires 
principally the cognition of particulars. But 
when, at times, that entire, abnormally increased 
power of cognition suddenly throws itself, with all 
its energy, upon the affairs and miseries of the 
will, it will easily form too vivid a picture of 
them and behold everything in too glaring colors, 
in too dazzling a light, and magnified to an 
enormous degree; whereby the individual is driven 



GENIUS. 129 

to nought but extremes. The following may 
serve to elucidate this more fully. All great theo- 
retical achievements, in. what branch soever, are 
accomplished by the originator directing all the 
powers of his mind upon one point, on which he 
allows them to converge, and he concentrates them 
so strongly, firmly, and exclusively, that all the 
remaining world vanishes, and his object fills all 
reality. This great and powerful concentration, 
which is the privilege of genius, is, at times, di- 
rected also upon the objects of reality and upon 
affairs of daily life, which then, brought under 
such a focus, are so monstrously magnified that they 
appear like the flea taking the size of the ele- 
phant in the solar microscope. This accounts for 
the fact that highly gifted individuals sometimes, 
on account of trifles, break out into all sorts of fits 
of passion which are incomprehensible to others, 
who see them thrown into sadness, mourning, joy, 
anxiety, fear, rage, etc., by things that would have 
no effect whatever upon an ordinary man. There- 
fore, the genius lacks that sobriety which consists in 
seeing in things no more than what they really 
are, especially, as regards our possible purposes : 
hence no sober man can be a genius. With these 
disadvantages there is associated an excess of sensi- 
bility caused by an abnormally increased nervous 
and cerebral life, and concomitant with the vio- 
lence and passion ateness of the will, which are 
likewise conditions of genius, and which are physi- 



130 GENIUS. 

cally manifested by the energy of the heart-beat. 
This is the source of that excessive tension of 
disposition, that violence of the emotions, that 
rapid change of humor, under predominating mel- 
ancholy, which Goethe has depicted in Tasso. 
What reasonableness, composure, comprehensive 
oversight, complete certainty, and regularity of 
behavior are shown by the well endowed normal 
man, in comparison with the dreamy forgetfulness 
and passionate excitement of the genius, whose 
inner torment is the womb of immortal works. 
Furthermore, genius lives essentially in solitude. 
Too rarely it happens that he can ever easily find 
his like, and he is too different from the rest to 
be their companion. In them, will; in him, cog- 
nition, predominates : therefore, their pleasures are 
not his own; his pleasures, not theirs. They are 
merely moral beings and have merely personal 
relations : but he is also a pure intellect belonging 
as such to all humanity. The train of thought of 
the intellect severed from its maternal soil, the 
will, and only periodically returning to it, will 
soon be completely distinguished from the normal 
intellect clinging to its stem. For this reason, and 
because they cannot keep step with him, he is 
not fit to think in common, that is, to converse, 
with them. They will take as little pleasure in 
his crushing superiority as he takes in them ; 
hence, they will feel more comfortable in the 
society of their like, and he will prefer the- con- 



GENIUS. 131 

versation with his like, although he can, as a rule, 
obtain this from their works only. Hence Cham- 
fort has very truly remarked : " There are few 
vices which hinder a man as much as great quali- 
ties do, from possessing many friends." The hap- 
piest lot that can befall a genius is exemption 
from business, which is not his element, and leis- 
ure for his creations. From all this follows that, 
although genius can make its possessor very happy 
in the hours in which he is given up to it and 
revels unrestrained in its enjoyment, nevertheless, 
it is by no means adapted to render his life 
happy; rather, the contrary. This is confirmed 
also by the experience given in the biographies. 
Moreover, the genius is out of relation with the 
external world, because, in his very actions and 
achievements, he is usually in opposition to, and 
in battle with, his time. Mere men of talent 
always appear at the right moment : for, moved 
as they are by the spirit of their time, and called 
forth by its necessities, they are just about able 
to satisfy them. Hence they participate in the 
progressive course of their contemporary civiliza- 
tion, or in the gradual advancement of a special 
science : for this they receive reward and applause. 
But their works can no longer be relished by the 
next generation ; they must be replaced by others 
that do not fail to appear. Genius, however, 
enters into his time like a comet into the orbits 
of the planets, to whose well regulated and easily 



132 GENIUS. 

discernible order, his wholly eccentric course is 
entirely strange. Accordingly, he cannot partici- 
pate in the existing, regular course of the civiliza- 
tion of his time, but throws his works far ahead 
on the open highway (as the imperator consecrat- 
ing himself to death throws his spear far ahead 
among the enemy), where time must overtake 
them. His relation to the men of talent flourish- 
ing at the time, he might express thus in the 
words of the evangelist : " My time is not yet 
come; but your time is always ready." (John 
7 : 6.) Talent can perform what surpasses the 
ability of the others to achieve, though not their 
ability to apprehend : it, therefore, at once finds its 
appreciates. The work of the genius, however^ 
transcends not only the ability of the others to 
accomplish, but also their ability to apprehend, it : 
hence these do not immediately become aware of 
it. Talent resembles an archer hitting a mark 
which the others cannot reach; genius resembles 
an archer hitting a mark which the others cannot 
even see. Therefore, they receive information 
about him, not immediately, but later on, 
and accept even this on mere faith. Accord- 
ingly, Goethe says in the Indenture : " Imita- 
tion is innate ; the master to be imitated is 
not easily recognized. Rarely is excellence 
found, still more rarely appreciated." And 
Chamfort says : "In respect to value, men are like 
diamonds. To a certain point of size, of purity, 



GENIUS. 133 

and of perfection, they have a fixed and marked 
price ; but, beyond that point, they have no price 
and find no purchasers." Bacon of Verulam, too, 
has expressed it : " Common people praise the 
lowest, admire the mediocre, but have no sense for 
highest virtues." (JDe Augm Sc. L. VI. C. 3.) Yes, 
some one may exclaim, apud vulgus ! Him, how- 
ever, I must assist with Machiavelli's assurance : 
"Nel mondo non e se -non volgo" ( In the world, 
there is nothing but rabble.) Philo, On Fame, 
remarks that usually one belongs more to the 
great mass than everyone thinks. It is in conse- 
quence of this late acknowledgment of works of 
genius, that they are seldom enjoyed by their 
contemporaries, and hence in the freshness of 
coloring which contemporariness and the present 
lend, but, like figs and dates, rather in a dry than 
in a fresh condition. 

If, finally, we now consider genius from the 
somatic side, we find it conditioned by several 
anatomical and physiological qualities, any one of 
which is rarely found perfect, but still more rarely 
are they found all together, yet they are all 
absolutely necessary ; so that it becomes clear, 
why genius occurs but as a wholly isolated, 
almost portentous, exception. The fundamental 
condition is an almost abnormal preponderance of 
sensibility over irribility and over the reproductive 
power, and, what heightens the difficulty, in a 
masculine body. (Women may possess considera- 



134 GENIUS. 

ble talent, but no genius : for they always remain 
subjective.) Likewise, the cerebral system must be 
utterly isolated from the ganglionic system, so 
that they are in complete opposition to one an- 
other. Thus the brain may lead its parasitic life 
upon the organism in a very decided, isolated, 
powerful, and independent manner. Thereby, in- 
deed, it will easily have a hostile influence upon 
the rest of the organism and wear it out prema- 
turely by its greater life and restless activity, if 
the organism itself be not likewise of energetic 
vital power and well constituted : the latter, there- 
fore, is also one of the conditions. Nay, even a 
good stomach is necessary, because of the special 
and narrow consensus of this organ with the brain. 
Principally, however, the brain must be of unusual 
development and size, especially, broad and high : 
but the depth will be less, and the cerebrum will, 
in proportion, abnormally preponderate over the 
cerebellum. No doubt, much depends upon its 
shape as a whole and in its parts : but our knowl- 
edge is insufficient to determine this with exact- 
ness ; although we easily recognize the noble form 
of a skull indicating great intelligence. The texture 
of the brain-mass must be of the highest degree 
of fineness and perfection, and consist of the purest, 
choicest, tenderest, and most irritable nervous sub- 
stance : certainly, the quantitative relation of the 
grey to the white substance has a marked influ- 
ence, which, however, we are not able to explain. 



GENIUS. 135 

Moreover, from the post mortem examination of 
Byron's corpse, we know that the white stood in 
an unusually great proportion to the grey sub- 
stance of the brain ; likewise, that his brain 
weighed six pounds. Cuvier's brain weighed five 
pounds : the normal weight is three pounds. In 
comparison with the preponderating brain, the 
spinal cord and nerves must be unusually thin. A 
beautifully arched, lofty and broad skull of a thin 
osseous tissue must protect the brain without con- 
straining it. This whole structure of the brain and 
nervous system is inherited from the mother ; to 
which we shall return in the next book. However, 
this maternal inheritance, is entirely insufficient to 
bring forth the phenomenon of genius, unless he 
inherits from the father an active, passionate tem- 
perament, manifested somatically as unusual energy 
of heart, and, consequently, of blood circulation, 
especially, towards the head. For thus, firstly, 
that turgescence peculiar to the brain, which causes 
the latter to press against its wall, is increased, so 
that, in case of fracture, it gushes forth from every 
aperture : secondly, by the due power of the heart, 
the brain receives that inner motion, still different 
from its constant rising and sinking at every res- 
piration ; it consists in a shock of its whole mass 
at every beat of the four cerebral arteries, whose 
energy must correspond to its here increased quan- 
tity. This motion is an indispensable condition for 
the activity of the brain. Therefore, a small 



136 GENIUS. 

stature, and especially a short neck are favorable 
to this activity, because the blood reaches the brain 
with more energy when the path is short : for this 
reason great minds rarely have large bodies. How- 
ever, that shortness of distance is not indispensable : 
Goethe, for instance, was above the average height. 
But if all these conditions touching the circulation 
of the blood, which are inherited from the father, 
are wanting; the favorable structure of the brain 
inherited from the mother will produce, at best, a 
talent, a fine understanding, which is supported by 
the phlegm then appearing : but a phlegmatic genius 
is impossible. From this condition of genius com- 
ing from the father, many of the above described 
defects of temperament are to be explained. If 
this condition exists without the former, that is, 
together with an ordinary, or even ill-constructed, 
brain, the result is vivacity without intellect, heat 
without light, hotspurs, men of intolerable restless- 
ness and petulance. That of two brothers, only one 
is a genius, and then usually the elder, as was, for 
instance, Kant's case, is, primarily, to be explained 
from the fact that only at his generation the father 
was at the height of strength and passion; although 
the other condition, received from the mother, may 
also be impeded by unfavorable circumstances. 

I have yet to add a special remark about the 
child-like character of genius ; that is, about a cer- 
tain similarity between genius and childhood. 
During childhood, as well as in the genius, the 



GENIUS. 137 

cerebral and nervous system is decidedly prepon- 
derating : for its development far outruns the de- 
velopment of the rest of the organism; so that as 
early as the seventh year, the brain has received 
its full size and mass. Bichat, therefore, says : 
"In infancy, the nervous, compared with the mus- 
cular, system is proportionately greater than in all 
subsequent years, since from that time most of the 
other systems predominate over it. We know that 
in order to see the nerves distinctly infants are 
always taken. ( u De la vie et la mod." Art. 8, Par. 
6.) The genital system develops last, and not until 
the beginning of manhood are irritability, repro- 
duction, and genital function in full power; and 
they then predominate over the mental function. 
From this it is to be explained that children, in 
general, are so sagacious, reasonable, fond of learn- 
ing, and docile, nay, on the whole, fonder and fitter 
for all theoretical occupations than grown-up per- 
sons are: for, in consequence of that course of 
development, they have more intellect than will, 
that is, than inclinations, desires, passions. For, 
intellect and brain are one, and so is the genital 
system one with the most violent of all desires: 
hence, I have called it the focus of the will. For 
the very reason that the pernicious activity of this 
system still slumbers, while the brain is very active, 
childhood is the time of innocence and happiness, 
the paradise of life, the lost Eden, to which we, for 
the rest of our life, yearningly look back. The 

10 



138 GENIUS. 

foundation of this happiness, however, is that in 
childhood our whole being lies much more in 
cognition than in will. This condition is still facil- 
itated, by the novelty of all objects. Therefore, the 
world, in the dawn of life, lies before us so fresh, 
glittering so magically, so attractive. The petty 
desires, changeful inclinations, and trivial cares of 
childhood, are but a weak counterpoise to that 
predominance of cognition. The innocent and 
serene gaze of children, which delights us, and, at 
times, in a few, reaches the sublime, contemplative, 
expression with which Raphael has adorned the 
heads of his angels, is to be explained from the 
preceding. Accordingly, the intellectual powers 
develop much earlier than the necessities which 
they are intended to serve: and here, as every- 
where else, nature acts very judiciously. For, 
at this time of predominating intelligence, man 
gathers a large supply of cognitions for future 
necessities, of which he is, at the time, still ignor- 
ant. Therefore, his intellect is now incessantly 
active, eagerly apprehends all appearances, broods 
over them, and carefully stores them up for a future 
time, — just as the bee gathers far more honey than 
she can consume, anticipating future necessities. 
It is certain that what a man gains in insight and 
knowledge until the age of puberty, is altogether 
more than all he subsequently learns, how learned 
soever he may become: for, it is the foundation of 
all human cognitions. Until this time, in the young 



GENIUS. 139 

body, plasticity predominates, whose powers later 
on, after it has completed its work, throw them- 
selves, by a metastasis, upon the generative system, 
causing sexual instinct to appear along with pu- 
berty, and now the will gradually gets the suprem- 
acy. Following childhood, strongly theoretical, 
and fond of learning, is restless, now stormy, now 
melancholy, youth, which afterward passes over 
into violent and earnest manhood. Because that 
fatal instinct is wanting in the child, his will is so 
moderate and subordinate to cognition; whence 
arises that character of innocence, intelligence, and 
reasonableness, peculiar to childhood. I need 
hardly mention now wherein the similarity be- 
tween childhood and genius consists: in the sur- 
plus of the powers of cognition over the wants of 
the will and in the predominance of mere cogni- 
tion arising from it. In truth, every child is, to a 
certain extent, a genius, and every genius, to a 
certain extent, a child. Their affinity is shown, 
primarily, in the naivete and sublime simplicity 
which is a fundamental trait of the true genius: 
it is also manifested in many other traits: so that 
a certain childlike character indeed belongs to the 
genius. In Riemer's notes on Goethe, it is men- 
tioned that Herder and others censured Goethe, 
that he was ever a great child: they certainly 
remarked, but did not blame, it with justice. Of 
Mozart, too, it was said that he remained all his 
life a child. (Nisseirs Biog. of Mozart, Page 2 



140 GENIUS. 

and 529.) Schlichtegroll's Necrology (of 1791, Vol. 
II: Page 109) says of him: "He became, at an 
early age, a man in his art; in all other relations 
he remained forever a child." Every genius is a 
great child, truly because he gazes into the world 
as into something strange, a play, therefore, with 
purely objective interest. Accordingly, he has as 
little as the child that dry earnestness of common 
people, who, capable of no other than subjective 
interests, always see in things mere motives for 
action. Who does not remain all his life a great 
child, but becomes an earnest, sober, sedate, and 
reasonable man, can be a very useful and able 
citizen of this world; but nevermore a genius. 
Indeed, he is a genius from the fact that, abnor- 
mally, he retains all his life that preponderance of 
the sensible system and of cognition natural to 
childhood; so that this preponderance becomes 
perennial. Truly, a trace of it continues in many 
ordinary men to the period of youth; so that, for 
instance, in many students, an aspiration still purely 
intellectual and a genial eccentricity are unmistaka- 
ble. But nature falls back into her old track: 
they metamorphose and arise in manhood as phil- 
istines incarnate, who terrify us, when we meet 
them again later in life. Upon the preceding rests 
Goethe's fine remark: "Children do not fulfill 
what they promise; young people very seldom, 
and when they keep their promise, the world does 
not keep its word with them." (Elective Affinities, 



GENIUS. 141 

Parti: Chap. 10.) And that world places the crowns, 
which it raised up on high for merit, on the heads 
of those who become the tools of her base inten- 
tions, or know how to deceive her. In accordance 
with what has been said, there exists, besides a 
mere youthful beauty, which nearly all, at some- 
time, possess (beaute du diable), a mere youthful 
intellectuality, a certain spiritual being, inclined 
and adapted to apprehend, understand, and learn. 
Everyone has it in childhood; few, in youth; but 
like the youthful beauty it is soon lost. Only in 
very few, the select, the one as well as the other 
continues during life so that, even at an advanced 
age, a trace of it is still visible: these are the truly 
beautiful and the true men of genius. 

The preponderance of the cerebral nervous sys- 
tem and of intelligence during childhood, and its 
retrogression in mature age, which have been- con- 
sidered, receive important elucidation and con- 
firmation from the fact that in the genus which 
ranks next to man, the monkey, the same relation 
is found to exist in a striking degree. It has 
gradually become certain that the highly intelli- 
gent ourang - outang is a young Pongo, who, as 
soon as he is grown up, loses the great similarity 
between his and the human face and, at the same 
time, the astonishing intelligence, in that the 
lower, animal, part of -the face enlarges the fore- 
head, in consequence, recedes, large crista for the 
development of the muscles give his skull an ani- 



142 GENIUS. 

mal shape, the activity of the nervous system 
sinks, and, in its stead, an extraordinary muscular 
power is developed, which, being sufficient for his 
preservation, now renders his great intelligence 
useless. Of especial importance is what has been 
said in this respect by Frederick Cuvier, and 
elucidated by Flourens in his review of the 
former's - Histoire Naturelle ; this review is to be 
found in the September number of the Journal 
des Savans, of 1839, and is separately reprinted 
with several additions under the following title : 
Resume analytique des observations de Fr. Cuvier, sur 
V instinct et V intelligence des animaux, p. Flourens, 
1841. He says (p. 50) : " The intelligence of the 
ourang - outang, an intelligence so highly and 
early developed, decreases with age. While the 
ourang - outang is young, he astonishes us by his 
sagacity, by his cunning, and by his address. 
But the adult ourang - outang is nothing but 
a gross, brutal, intractable, animal. This is the 
case with all monkeys as well as with the 
ourang - outang. In all of them, intelligence 
decreases in proportion as their strength in- 
creases. The animal which has most intelli- 
gence, has all of it in youth only." Furthermore, 
(p. 87) : " Monkeys of all kinds offer this inverse 
relation of age and intelligence. Thus, for ex- 
ample, the entellus (a kind of she - monkey of the 
sub - genus of the symno - pithecus, and one of the 
monkeys venerated in the religion of the Brah- 



GENIUS. 143 

manists) has, in youth, a large forehead, the 
snout projecting somewhat, and an elevated, 
rounded skull, etc. With age, the forehead re- 
cedes, the snout becomes prominent, and his 
moral changes no less than his physical nature : 
apathy, violence, love of solitude take the place of 
sagacity, docility, and confidence." " These differ- 
ences are so great," says M. Cuvier, "that, ac- 
customed as we are to judge the actions of ani- 
mals by our own, we would take the young ani- 
mal for an individual of the age in which all 
the moral qualities of the species are acquired, 
and the adult enteUus for an individual who had 
nothing but his physical strength. But nature 
does not act thus with animals that must not 
leave their appointed sphere. It is sufficient for 
animals to be in some manner able to preserve 
their existence. For this, intelligence was neces- 
sary as long as there was no strength ; and as 
soon as this was acquired, all other powers lost 
their utility. " And p. 118: "The preservation of 
the species depends no less upon the intellectual 
than upon the organic qualities of animals." The 
latter confirms my doctrine that the intellect, as 
well as claws and teeth, is nothing but a tool for 
the service of the will. 



TEOTETICg §f P0ETRY. 




S the simplest and most correct definition of 
poetry, I would call it the art of exciting 
by words the power of the imagination. 
How this is brought about, I have shown in the 
first volume, § 51.* A special confirmation of 
what has been said, is furnished by the following 
passage from a letter of Wieland to Merck : "I 
have spent two days and a half upon a single 
stanza, where the matter really depended upon a 
single word which I wanted and could not find. 
I twisted and turned the matter and my brain 
in all conceivable directions ; because, of course, 
where a picture is at stake, I would gladly bring 
the same definite vision that is floating before my 
mind, before the mind of my readers too ; and for 
which, as you know, all frequently depends upon 
a single stroke or turn." (Letters to Merck, 
edited by Wagner, 1835, Page 193.) Because the 
reader's imagination is the material in which 
poetic art represents its j)ictures, this has the ad- 

* " Die Welt als Wille und Yorstellung:." 



AESTHETICS OF POETRY. 145 

vantage that the more special execution and finer 
traits so appear in each one's imagination, as is at 
the time most suitable to his individuality, his 
sphere of cognition, and his humor, and hence 
affects him in the most lively manner ; the plas- 
tic arts, however, cannot thus accommodate them- 
selves, but here one picture, one figure, must suffice 
for all ; but this will, in some respect, always bear 
the stamp of the individuality of the artist or of his 
model, as a subjective, or accidental, ineffective ad- 
dition : although the less, the more objective, that 
is, the more of a genius the artist is. Even from 
this it may partially be explained, that the works 
of poetry exercise a much stronger, deeper, and 
more general influence than pictures and statues : 
for these usually leave people entirely cold. And, 
after all, the plastic are the least effective arts. 
An odd proof of this is furnished by the frequent 
discovery of the pictures of great masters in private 
houses and all sorts of places, where, for centu- 
ries, they have hung, not indeed buried, and 
hidden, .but merely unnoticed, consequently, with- 
out effect. In my own time (1823) there was dis- 
covered in Florence even a Madonna of Raphael, 
which had, for many years, hung on the wall of 
the servant's room in a palace (in the Quartiere 
di S. Spirito) : and this happens in Italy, a nation 
endowed more than all others with sense of 
beauty. It proves how little direct and immediate 
effect the works of the plastic arts have, and that 



146 ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

appreciation of them needs, far more than that of 
all others, education and knowledge. But how 
infallibly a beautiful melody touching the heart 
travels around the world, and an excellent poem 
wanders from people to people. That the great 
and rich lend powerful aid merely to the plastic 
arts, and bestow considerable sums upon their 
works ; nay, that to-day an idolatry, in the real 
sense of the word, gives the value of a large 
estate for a picture of a renowned old master, is 
caused principally by the rarity of the master- 
pieces, whose possession, therefore, suits their 
pride ; but also because their enjoyment requires 
very little time and exertion, and is ready every 
moment for a moment ; while poetry, and even 
music, involve much more troublesome conditions. 
Accordingly, the plastic arts may be wholly 
missed : whole nations, for example, the Mohame- 
dan, are without them : but there is none without 
music and poetry. 

Now, the purpose the poet has in setting our 
imagination, in motion, is to reveal to us the ideas, 
that is, to show by an example what life and the 
world are. To do this he must, in the first place, 
know himself what they are: accordingly, his poe- 
try will prove deep or shallow according to the depth 
of his cognition. Thus, just as there are unnumer- 
able gradations of depth and clearness in the 
apprehension of the nature of things, so are 
there of poets. Each one of them, however, must 



ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 147 

consider himself excellent in so far as he has 
correctly represented what he intuitively knows, and 
in so far as his picture corresponds to the original: 
he must place himself on a footing of equality with 
the best poets, because he recognizes no more in 
their pictures than in his own, viz: as much as in 
nature herself; for his vision penetrates no deeper. 
The best poet, however, recognizes himself as such 
in that he sees how shallow the vision of the rest 
was, how much there lay back of it, which they 
could not reproduce because they did not see it, 
and how much farther his vision and his picture 
reach. If he understood the shallow poets as little 
as they understand him, he would have to despair: 
for, because it takes quite an extraordinary man to 
do justice to him, and common poets can esteem 
him no more than he does them, he must feed a 
long time on his own applause before the world's 
follows. Meanwhile, even his own applause is im- 
paired, because they expect him to be very modest. 
But it is as impossible for him, who has merits 
and knows what they cost, to be blind to them 
himself, as for a man six feet high not to know 
that he overtops the others. If the distance from 
the base to the top of a tower is three hundred feet, 
the distance is certainly as great from the top to 
the base. Horace, Lucrece, Ovid, and nearly all 
ancient writers have spoken proudly of themselves; 
likewise, Dante, Shakespeare, Bacon of Verulam, 
and many others. To be a great mind without 



148 JESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

being impressed by it, is an absurdity which only 
disconsolate inability would endeavor to believe, 
in order to regard the feeling of its own worthless- 
ness as modesty also. An Englishman made the 
witty and true remark, that merit and modesty 
have nothing in common save the initials*. I 
always entertained a suspicion that modest celeb- 
rities may be right in their opinion of themselves, 
and Corneille says, unreservedly: 

"La fausse huuiilite ne met plus en credit: 
Je scais ce que je vaux, et crois ce qu 'on m'en dit." 

(False modesty gives no one more credit: 
I know what I am worth, and believe what they tell me 
of it.) 

Goethe, finally, candidly says: "Only scamps 
are modest." But, more infallible still would be 
the assertion that those who so zealously demand 
modesty from others, urgently press for modesty, 
and incessantly cry: "Modesty, for God's sake, 
modesty! " are assuredly scamps, that is, wholly 
worthless wretches, nature's factory-ware, regular 
members of the mass of mankind. For whoever 
possesses merits himself, admits them also in others, 
— of course, genuine and real merits. But he who 
is destitute of all excellencies and merits, wishes 
there were none at all: the sight of them in others 
puts him on the rack: pale, green, sallow envy 

* According to Lichtenberg, Stanislaus Lescinsky said : 
" Modesty ought to be the virtue of those who lack the others." 



ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 149 

consumes his heart: he would annihilate and ex- 
tirpate all who are personally endowed; but, if he 
unfortunately must let them live, it is to be solely 
under the condition that they hide, wholly deny, 
yes, abjure their superiority. This, then, is the 
source of the frequent eulogies on modesty. And 
when the extollers of it have an opportunity to 
extinguish merit in the cradle, or at least to pre- 
vent its display, who will doubt that they do it? 
For this is the practice to their theory. 

Although the poet, like every artist, always pre- 
sents to our view only the particular, the individ- 
ual; yet, what he perceived, and wishes us to 
perceive, thereby, is the (Platonic) idea, the whole 
genus, so that in his images, as it were, the type 
of human characters and situations will be ex- 
pressed. The narrative, as well as the dramatic, 
poet selects from life the wholly particular, and 
depicts it exactly in its individuality, but reveals 
thereby our entire human existence : for, though 
seemingly engaged with particulars, he is in reality 
engaged with what exists everywhere and at all 
times. This accounts for the fact that sayings, 
especially of the dramatic poets, though not neces- 
sarily general opinions, find frequent application in 
practical life. 

Philosophy holds the same relation to poetry as 
empirical science to experience. For experience 
gives us, by examples, an acquaintance with single 
phenomena; science embraces the whole, by means 



150 ESTHETICS OF POET BY. 

of general ideas. Thus, the object of poetry is to 
acquaint us with the Platonic ideas of beings, by 
means of particular things and by examples: the 
object of philosophy is to teach us to see the 
inner essence of things as a whole, and in general 
which is revealed in them. Even from this it may 
be surmised that poetry bears more the character 
of youth; philosophy, more that of age. In fact, 
"the poetic gift blooms in youth only;— also, the 
susceptibility to poetry is often passionate in youth: 
a youth takes delight in verses as such, and is 
often satisfied with mediocre productions. With 
age, this inclination gradually declines, and in old 
age prose is preferred. By that poetic tendency in 
youth, the sense of reality is often corrupted. For 
the difference between this and poetry is, that, in 
the latter, life glides along painless and yet inter- 
esting; in the real world, however, life, as long as 
it is painless, is uninteresting, but, as soon as it 
becomes interesting, it is not without pains. The 
youth who is initiated into poetry prior to reality 
then demands from the latter, what the former 
alone can do for him: this is the chief source of 
that discomfort depressing the most excellent 
youths. 

Metre and rhyme are fetters, but likewise a gar- 
ment which the poet throws about him and under 
which he is allowed to speak as he otherwise 
could not : this is what delights us. Indeed, he is 
but half responsible for what he says : metre and 



ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 151 

rhyme must answer for the other half. Metre or 
the measure of time has, as mere rhythm , its es- 
sence in time alone, which, is a pure intuition, a 
priori, hence belongs, in Kant's language, solely to 
pure sensibility ; however, rhyme is a mere matter 
of sensation in the organ of hearing, that is, of 
empirical sensibility. Hence rhythm is a far nobler 
and worthier aid than rhyme, which the ancients 
accordingly disdained, and which took its origin in 
the incomplete languages that arose, in barbaric 
times, by the corruptions of the ancient lan- 
guages. The poverty of French poetry rests chiefty 
upon the fact that, being without metre, it is re- 
stricted to rhyme ; and is, moreover, increased by 
the fact that, in order to hide its want of means, 
it has made rhyming more difficult by a multi- 
tude of pedantic rules, for instance, that only syl- 
lables written alike rhyme, as though it were for 
the eye, not for the ear; that the hiatus is pro- 
scribed ; many words dare not occur, etc., all of 
which the modern French school of poets en- 
deavors to put an end to. In no language, at 
least for myself, does rhyme make so strong and 
pleasant an impression as in the Latin : the medi- 
eval rhyming Latin poems have a peculiar charm. 
It must be explained from the fact that the Latin 
is without comparison more perfect, beautiful, and 
noble than any .modern language ; so that it 
marches so gracefully in the ornaments and tinsel 



152 AESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

belonging to the latter, but disdained by- the 
former. 

To serious consideration, it would appear almost 
high treason against reason if the least violence 
were done to a thought, or even to its correct and 
pure impression, with the intention to hear the 
same sound again after a few syllables, or also to 
have these syllables themselves represent a certain 
jingle. But without some violence, few verses 
make their appearance : for to this it must be 
ascribed that, in foreign languages, poetry is much 
more difficult to be understood than prose. 
Could we glance into the secret work-shop of the 
poets, we would find ten times oftener that the 
thought is sought for the rhyme, than that the 
rhyme is sought for the thought : and even in the 
latter instance, the issue is not without con- 
cession on the part of the thought. Yet the 
art of versification defies these considerations, 
and has all times and peoples on its side : 
so great is the power which metre and rhyme 
exercise over our feelings, and so effective is 
their peculiar, mysterious lenotinium. I would 
explain this from the circumstance that a happily 
rhymed verse, by its indescribably emphatic effect, 
rouses the sensation that the thought expressed 
in it had lain predestined, nay, preformed in the 
language, and the poet had but to search it 
out. Even trivial thoughts receive from rhythm 
and rhyme a touch of significance and cut a figure 



ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 153 

in this ornament, as, among maidens, ordinary 
faces fascinate the eye by finery. Nay, even er- 
roneous and entirely false thoughts acquire a 
show of truth by versification. On the contrary, 
even famous passages from renowned poets shrink 
up and become insignificant, when faithfully trans- 
lated into prose. If the true alone is beautiful 
and the greatest ornament of truth is nakedness, 
then a thought appearing beautiful in prose will 
have more true value than one equally effective in 
poetry. That a means like metre and rhyme, 
seemingly so trivial, nay, childish, should exercise 
such an effect, is very striking and .well worth in- 
vestigation. I explain it in the following man- 
ner : That which is immediately given to the ear, 
that is, the mere sound of words received from 
rhythm and rhyme, is a certain perfection and 
significance in itself ; for it then becomes a kind 
of music: accordingly, it seems now to exist for 
its own sake and no longer as a mere means, a 
mere sign of something signified, that is, of the 
sense of the words. To delight the ear with its 
sounds, seems its whole destiny, and, having done 
this, everything seems to be accomplished and 
every claim satisfied. That it, at the same time, 
conveys a meaning, expresses a thought, proves, 
as it were, an unexpected addition, like the words 
to music, an unexpected gift, pleasantly surpris- 
ing uSj and, because we made no claims of this 
sort, very easily satisfying us : but if this thought 



154 ESTHETICS OF- POETRY. 

is one which, as such, that is, expressed in prose, 
would be significant, we are charmed. I can 
remember from early childhood that I found 
pleasure in the pleasant sound of verses, before I 
made the discovery that they contained through- 
out meaning and thought. Accordingly,- there may 
exist in all languages a sort of ding-dong poetry, 
almost entirely destitute of meaning. The sinolo- 
gist, Davis, in the preface to his translation of 
the Laou-sang-urh, or, An Heir in Old Age (Lon- 
don, 1817), remarks that the Chinese dramas con- 
sist in part of verses that are sung, and adds : 
"Their meaning is often obscure, and, acccording 
to the statement of the Chinese themselves, the 
special purpose of these verses is to flatter the 
ear, whereby the meaning is neglected and fre- 
quently, perhaps, wholly sacrificed to harmony." 
Who is not reminded here of the choruses of 
many Greek tragedies often so difficult to be de- 
ciphered ? 

The sign whereby the genuine poet of higher as 
well as of lower rank is most immediately known, 
is the spontaneity of his rhymes ; they came, as 
it were, by divine dispensation: his thoughts come 
to him in rhymes. The secret prosaist seeks a 
rhyme for the thought ; the bungler, the thought 
for the rhyme. From a rhyming couplet, we can 
very often find out to which verse the thought, 
and to which the rhyme, is father. The art con- 



AESTHETICS OF POETRY. 155 

sists in hiding the latter that such verses may not 
appear as mere bouts-rimes. 

My feeling of the matter (proofs cannot be 
given) is, that rhyme, from the nature of it, is 
merely secondar}' : its effect is limited to the single 
return of the same sound, and is not strengthened 
by frequent repetition. Accordingly, as soon as a 
final syllable has perceived the one of like sound, 
its effect is exhausted : the third return of the 
sound has but the effect of another rhyme, acci- 
dentally hitting the same sound, but without 
heightening the effect : it is joined to the preced- 
ing rhyme without, however, producing a stronger 
impression. For the sound of the first syllable 
does not continue thus through the second to the 
third : the latter is an aesthetic pleonasm, a double 
courage that is of no assistance. Therefore, such 
accumulations of rhymes are least deserving of the 
heavy sacrifices which are the price of otta- 
verimes, terzerines and sonnets, and which are the 
cause of that soul-torture, frequently inflicted upon 
us by reading those productions : for poetic en- 
joyment, while your brains are in the rack, is im- 
possible. The fact that a great poetic genius can 
sometimes overcome even those forms and their 
difficulties, and move about with ease and grace is 
no compliment to them, for as such, they are as 
ineffective as troublesome, and even when good 
poets make use of these forms, we frequently see 
the battle between the rhyme and the thought 



156 ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

where now the one, now the other, gains the vic- 
tory ; that is, either the thought is mutilated for 
the sake of the rhyme, or the latter is compro- 
mised with a feeble a peu pres. I take it for a 
proof not of ignorance, but of good taste, that 
Shakespeare, in his sonnets, has given other 
rhymes to each of his quatrains. At any rate, 
their acoustic effect is thus not in the least di- 
minished, and much more justice is done to the 
thought than would have been the case, if he had 
rigidly laced it in the traditional Spanish boots. 

It is a disadvantage to any poetry for the lan- 
guage to have many words not used in prose, and, 
again, certain words which cannot be used in poe- 
try. The former occurs oftenest in the Latin and 
Italian, the latter, in the French, where it recently 
was very strikingly designated as la begeulerie de la 
langue Francaise (the prudery of the French lan- 
guage): both are to be found less in the English 
and least in the German. Words belonging exclu- 
sively to poetry are foreign to our hearts, do not 
speak to us, and so leave us cold. They are a 
conventional language of poetry, and, as it were, 
merely painted, instead of real feelings. They 
exclude true sincerity (Innigkeit). 

The difference between classic and romantic poetry, 
so often discussed in our day, seems to me to rest, 
at bottom, on the fact that the former knows 
no motives other than the purely human, real, 
and natural: the latter, however, adds artificial, 



JESTHETIC8 OF POETRY. 157 

conventional, and imaginary motives: to these be- 
long those whose origin dates back to the Chris- 
tian mythus ; secondly, those of the chivalrous, 
overstrained, and fantastical principle of honor ; 
furthermore, those of the stale and ridiculous 
Christian-Germanic woman veneration; finally, those 
of prating and moonstruck hyperphysical love. To 
what grotesque distortions of human relations and 
of human nature these motives may lead, may 
be seen even in the best poets of the Romantic 
school, Calderon, for instance. Not to mention the 
Autos, I call to mind but such plays as No siem- 
pre el peor es cierto (Not Always is the Worst Certain) 
and El postrero duelo en Esparto, (The Last Duel in 
Spain), and similar comedies en capa y espada: in 
addition to these elements, there are associated the 
frequently prominent scholastic subtleties in con- 
versation, which then belonged to the mental 
culture of the higher classes. How advantageously 
does the poetry of the ancients, always remaining 
true to nature, compare with it. It follows that 
classic poetry has an absolute, the romantic, but a 
relative, truth and correctness, analogous to Greek 
and Roman architecture. However, we must re- 
mark that all dramatic or narrative poems placing 
the scene of action in ancient Greece or Rome 
stand at a disadvantage, because our knowledge of 
antiquity, especially what concerns the details of 
life, is insufficient, fragmentary, and not derived from 
intuition. For this forces the poet to evade a great 



158 ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

deal and to resort to generalities, whereby he wan- 
ders into the abstract, and his work loses that 
intuitive character and individualization which are 
absolutely essential to poetry. This it is, which 
gives to all works of that sort the peculiar tinge of 
voidness and tediousness. Only Shakespeare's repre- 
sentations of that class are free from it, because, under 
the name of Greeks and Romans he has unhesi- 
tatingly represented Englishmen of his time. 

Many masterpieces of lyric poetry, especially sev- 
eral odes of Horace (for instance, the Second Ode of 
Book III), and several of Goethe's songs (as The 
Shepherd's Lament), have been criticised for lack- 
ing the proper connection and abounding in sudden 
leaps of thought. But here the logical connection 
has been intentionally neglected to be replaced by 
the unity of the fundamental feeling and mood 
expressed therein; which, on that very account, 
become more prominent, in that they pass like a 
string through the separate pearls, and so mediate 
the rapid change of objects of contemplation; as in 
music, the transition from one key to the other is 
mediated by the heptachord, by which the funda- 
mental tone continuing the sound in it becomes 
the dominant of the new key. The quality here 
described is found more distinctly, indeed, to ex- 
cess, in the song of Petrarch, beginning with the 

words : 

Mai non vo 1 pin cantar, com' io soleva. 

As in lyric poetry the subjective element pre- 



ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 159 

dominates, so in the drama, on the contrary, the 
objective, is the sole and exclusive element. Be- 
tween both, epic poetry, in all its forms and mod- 
ifications, from the narrative romance to the epic 
proper, occupies a broad intervening space. For, 
although it is in the main objective, it yet con- 
tains a subjective element, becoming more or less 
prominent, which is manifested in the tone, in the 
form of the .discourse, as well as in the interspersed 
reflections. We never lose sight of the poet so com- 
pletely as we do in the drama. 

The object of the drama, in general, is to show 
us by an example what the essence and existence 
of man are. The poet may here display the sad 
or the cheerful side of it, or, their transition stages. 
But the very expression "essence and existence of 
man" contains the germ of the controversy, whether 
the essence, that is, the characters, or the existence, 
that is, fate, event, action, is the main point. 
Moreover, both are so firmly grown together, that 
the idea, but not the representation of them may 
be separated. For only circumstances, destinies, 
events, bring the characters to reveal their nature, 
and only from characters arises action, from which 
there spring events. Of course, in the representa- 
tion, the one or the other may be made the more 
prominent: in this respect, the character-play and 
the intrigue-play constitute the two extremes. The 
purpose common' to drama and to epic, namely, to 
represent eminent characters in striking situations 



1G0 ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

and the extraordinary actions brought about by 
both, will be most perfectly accomplished by the 
poet, if he first shows us the characters in a state 
of rest, in which merely their general coloring- 
becomes visible, but then allows a motive to enter 
causing an action from which a fresh and stronger 
motive arises; this calls forth a more important 
action, which, in turn, begets new and continually 
stronger motives; thus, in a space of time adapted 
to the form, there enters, in place of the original 
quiet, passionate excitement, in which the impor- 
tant actions occur, by means of which the qualities 
previously slumbering in the characters, together 
with the course of the world, are revealed. 

Great poets metamorphose themselves entirety 
into each of the persons to be represented, and 
speak from each of them like a ventriloquist, now, 
in the character of the hero, and then again in that 
of the young, innocent maiden, with equal truth 
and naturalness : so Shakespeare and Goethe. Sec- 
ond-class poets change the chief person to be 
represented into themselves ; so Byron's, whereby 
often the other persons remain without life; as in 
the works of the mediocre, the chief person too. 

The pleasure we take in tragedy belongs not to 
the feeling of the beautiful, but to the feeling of 
the sublime; indeed, it is the highest degree of 
this feeling. For, as we, at the sight of the sub- 
blime in nature, abandon the interest of the will, 
in order to be in a state of pure contemplation; 



ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 161 

so, in the presence of the tragical catastrophe, we 
abandon the will to live itself. For, in the tragedy, 
the terrible side of life is brought before us, the 
misery of mankind, the sway of chance and of 
error, the fall of the just, the triumph of the 
wicked: that is, the condition of the world, forever 
combating our will, is displayed. At the sight of 
this, we feel summoned to avert our will from life, 
to desire and love it no longer. But in consequence 
of this, we become aware that there is then something- 
else left of us, which we can never know posi- 
tively, but merely negatively, as something which 
desires life no longer. As the heptachord requires 
the fundamental chord, as red requires green, and 
even produces it in the eye, so every tragedy re- 
quires an entirely different existence, another world, 
a knowledge of which can be given us only In- 
directly, as in this case by such a demand. At the 
moment of the tragic catastrophe, we are more 
strongly than ever convinced that life is a heavy 
dream from which we must awake. To this 
extent the effect of tragedy is analogous to the 
dynamically sublime, in that tragedy, like the 
latter, elevates us above the will and its affairs, and 
so changes our feeling that we feel pleasure in 
the very things which repel us. What gives to all 
tragedy, in what shape soever it may appear, the 
peculiar impetus to exaltation, is the dawning cog- 
nition that the world, that life can offer no true 
satisfaction, consequently, are not worthy of our 



162 ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

attachment ; therein consists the tragical spirit ; it, 
therefore, leads to resignation. 

I grant that in the tragedy of the ancients this 
spirit of resignation is seldom directly prominent 
and expressed. OEdipus Colonus, it is true, dies 
resignedly and willingly ; but revenge upon his 
native country consoles him. Iphigenia of Aulis is 
very willing to die ; but it is the thought of 
Greece's welfare that consoles her and causes the 
change in her feeling, in consequence of which 
she willingly accepts the death she at first wishes 
to escape in every possible way. Cassandra, in 
the Agamemnon of the great iEschylus, dies will- 
ingly, ocpkEiToo fjios. 1308 ; but she too is con- 
soled by the thought of revenge. Hercules, in the 
Trachinise, yields to necessity, dies calmly, but 
not resignedly. The same holds true of the Hip- 
polytus of Euripides, where we are struck by the 
fact that Artemis, who comes to console him, 
promises him temples and fame, but does not at 
all point to an existence after life, and forsakes 
him in death, as all gods forsake the dying : in 
Christianity, they approach the dying, and so, too, 
in Brahmanism and Buddhism ■ though, in the 
latter, the gods are really exotic. Thus, Hippoly- 
tus, like most of the tragic heroes of the ancients, 
shows submission to inevitable fate and to the in- 
flexible will of the gods, but no surrender of the 
will to live itself. As Stoic indifference is funda- 
mentally different from resignation, because the 



ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 163 

former teaches but patient endurance and calm ex- 
pectation of inevitably necessary evils; Christianity, 
however, surrender of the will ; so the tragic 
heroes of the ancients show steadfast submission 
to the inevitable blows of fortune ; Christian 
tragedy, however, the surrender of the entire will 
to live, joyous departure from the world, in the 
consciousness of its worthlessness and nothingness. 
But I am entirely of the opinion that the modern 
tragedy ranks higher than the ancient. Shakes- 
peare is far greater than Sophocles : compared with 
Goethe's, the Iphigenia of Euripides might appear 
almost rude and vulgar. The Bacchantes of Eu- 
ripides are a revolting fabrication in favor of the 
pagan priests. Many ancient plays have no tragic 
tendency whatever, as the Alceste and the Iphi- 
genia of Taurus of Euripides : some have repug- 
nant or even nauseous motives, as the Antigone 
and the Philocletus. Nearly all their plays show 
mankind under the atrocious rule of chance and 
error, but not the resignation caused by, and de- 
livering from, it. And all because the ancients 
had not yet attained the summit and goal of 
tragedy, indeed, of the view of life in general. 

Accordingly, if the ancients but little represent 
the spirit of resignation, the will's abandoning life, 
in their tragic heroes themselves, as their senti- 
ment ; it, nevertheless, remains the peculiar tend- 
ency and effect of tragedy to awaken that spirit in 
the spectator and call forth, though but temporarily, 



164 ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

that feeling. The terrors of the stage display to him 
the bitterness and worthlessness of life, the vanity 
of all his striving : it must be the effect of this 
impression that he, if but in vague feeling, per- 
ceives that it were better to tear his heart awa} 7- 
from life, to avert his will from it, not to love life 
and the world ; whereby, then, in the inmost 
depths of his nature, the consciousness is aroused 
that, for a different kind of will, there must be 
another kind of existence. But, if this were not 
the case, if the tendency of tragedy were not 
exaltation above all the aims and terrors of life, 
this abandonment of it and of its allurements and 
the turning to another existence, though wholly 
incomprehensible to us — how could it at all be 
possible that the representation of the terrible side 
of life, brought before us in the most glaring light, 
could exercise a beneficent effect and become a 
source of high enjoyment to us? Fear and pity, 
which are, according to Aristotle, the final object 
of tragedy, do, forsooth, not belong to the pleasant 
emotions ; hence they cannot be the object, but 
only a means. Thus, the summons to avert the 
will from life remains the true tendency of tragedy, 
the final object of the intentional representation of 
the sufferings of mankind, and is it still, where 
the resigned exaltation of spirit is not shown in 
the hero himself but merely roused in the specta- 
tor at the sight of great sufferings of which the 
hero was guiltless, nay, even at the sight of those 



AESTHETICS OF POETRY. 165 

of which he was guilty. As the ancients, so, too, 
many of the moderns are content with putting 
the spectator into that feeling by the objective 
representation of human misery at large ; while 
others represent in the hero himself the revolution 
produced by suffering : those give, as it were, only 
the premises and leave the conclusion to the 
spectator ; while these give the conclusion or the 
moral of fable too, in the shape of the revolution 
of the hero's feelings, or, perhaps, even as reflec- 
tion in the mouth of the chorus ; as, for instance, 
Schiller, in The Bride of Messina : " Life is not the 
highest of possessions." I may remark here, that 
the genuinely tragic effect of the catastrophe, that 
is, the hero's resignation and the exaltation of 
mind brought about by the catastrophe, is seldom 
so purely motived and clearly expressed as in the 
opera Norma, where it appears in the duet Qual 
cor tradisti, qual cor perclesti, in which the revolu- 
tion of the will is clearly indicated by the sudden 
calmness of the music. In general, this piece, 
considered apart from its excellent music, as well 
as from its diction, which can be but the language 
of an opera, — and considered solely according to 
its motives and inner economy, is a highly per- 
fect tragedy, a true model of tragic arrangement of 
motives, of tragic progress of action, and of tragic 
development, together with its world-elating effect 
upon the feeling of the hero, which then, likewise, 
takes possession of the spectator : indeed, the effect 



166 ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

here attained is so much the more unequivocal and 
expressive of the true essence of tragedy, as neither 
Christians nor Christian sentiments occur in it. 

The neglect of the unity of time and place, for 
which the moderns have been so frequently criti- 
cised, becomes a fault only when it goes so far as 
to destroy the unity of action: in this case, there 
remains only the unity of the chief persons, as, 
for instance, in Shakespeare's Henry VIII. The 
unity of action, however, need not go to such an 
extreme that continually the same subject is dis- 
cussed, as in the French tragedies, which so strictly 
observe it that the course of the drama resembles 
a geometric line without breadth ; the watch- 
word is always, " Go ahead ! " Pensez a voire affaire, 
(mind your own business !) and the matter is dis- 
patched and settled in a very business-like manner, 
and non-essentials are not allowed to detain it. 
Shakespeare's tragedy, however, resembles a line 
that has breadth too : it takes time, exspatiatur : 
there occur speeches, even entire scenes, which do 
not advance the action, even do not really concern 
it, but from which we learn to know more inti- 
mately the acting persons or their circumstances, 
so that we then understand the action more thor- 
oughly. This, it is true, is the main point; but 
not so exclusively that we should forget that the 
object, in the last instance, is the representation of 
human nature and of life in general. 

The dramatic or epic poet ought to know that 



AESTHETICS OF POETRY. 167 

he is fate, and, therefore, to be as inexorable as 
the latter ; — likewise, that he is the mirror of 
mankind, and, therefore, he ought to allow very 
many bad, at times, desperate characters, to appear, 
as well as many silly persons, distorted minds, and 
fools, but now and then, a reasonable, a sagacious, 
an honest, a good, and only, as a rare exception, a 
noble, man. In all Homer, there is, I think, not 
one really noble character represented, although 
some very good and honest ones : in all Shakes- 
peare there may be, at all Events, a few noble, 
though by no means exceedingly noble characters, 
perhaps Cordelia, Coriolanus, hardly more. How- 
ever, his plays are swarming with the kind 
described above. But the plays of IfTland and 
Kotzebue have many noble characters, while Gol- 
doni has done as I have recommended ; whereby 
he shows that he takes a higher rank. Lessing's 
Minna von Barn helm, labors strongly in too much 
and universal nobleness. But so much nobleness 
as is to be found in that one Marquis Posa, is not 
to be gathered from Goethe's complete works taken 
together. There is, however, a short German play, 
Duty for Duty (a title seemingly taken from the 
Critique of Practical Reason), which has but three 
persons, yet all three of exceeding nobility. 

The Greeks, as a rule, took royal personages as 
the heroes of their tragedies ; the moderns, for the 
most part, also. Certainly not because rank gives 
more dignity to the actor or sufferer : and, since 



168 ^ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 

the sole object is to set human passions in mo- 
tion, the relative value of the objects, by which this 
is brought about, is indifferent ; so that farm- 
yards and kingdoms serve equally well. Yet the 
tragedy of common life is by no means to be en- 
tirely rejected. Persons of great power and au- 
thority are best adapted to tragedy, because the 
unhappiness, in which we are to recognize the fate 
of human life, must be of sufficient magnitude to 
appear terrible to the spectator, whoever he be. 
Euripides > himself says : <p£v, <pev, va iieycxXa, jae- 
yaXa, Kai 7ta6x^i kaka. Now, the circumstances 
which put an ordinary family into distress and 
despair, are, in the eyes of the great or rich, usually 
very trivial and to be redressed by human efforts, 
nay, frequently by a trifle ; these spectators, there- 
fore, cannot receive a tragic impression from them. 
But the misfortunes of the great and powerful are 
positively terrible and inaccessible to outside assist- 
ance ; for kings must help themselves by their 
own power or perish. And besides, the fall is 
greater from the greater height. Common persons, 
accordingly, want height to fall from. 

Now, if we have found as the tendency and last 
object of tragedy a tendency to resignation, to the 
denial of the will to live, we will easily recognize 
in its counterpart, the comedy, the summons to 
continued affirmation of the will to live. It is 
true that comedy, as every representation of 
human life, must display sufferings and reverses : 



ESTHETICS OF POETRY. 169 

but it shows them to us as transitory, dissolving 
into pleasure, generally mixed with success, victory, 
and hope, which finally preponderate ; and thus 
it affords many opportunities for laughter, with 
which life, nay, adversity itself, is filled, and 
which, under all circumstances, is to keep us in 
good humor. It declares that, in the end, life on 
the whole is very good and entertaining through- 
out. Of course, comedy must make haste to drop 
the curtain in the period of pleasure, that we may 
not see what follows ; while tragedy, as a. rule ? so 
closes that nothing can follow. And, if we but 
once take a serious view of that burlesque side of 
life, how it is displayed in the naive expressions 
and gestures which petty disconcertedness, personal 
fear, momentary anger, secret envy, and many 
similar fits of passion impress upon the figures of 
reality, that depart considerably from the type of 
beauty ; — from this side, too, the pensive observer 
may unexpectedly become convinced, that the ex- 
istence and actions of such beings cannot be here 
for their own sake ; that they, on the contrary, 
entered existence upon a wrong path ; and that 
what so represents itself had better not be. 



12 



EDOO^'FieN. 



JTTN accordance with the nature of our intellect, 
^ ideas ought to arise by means of the power of 
abstraction from intuitions ; whence it follows 
that the latter ought to precede the former. Now 
if this course is really followed, as in the case of 
him who has only his own experience as teacher 
and book, he knows very well what intuitions are 
included under each of his ideas and are repre- 
sented by them : he is intimately acquainted with 
both and accordingly treats everything he meets 
with properly. We may call this course natural 
education. In artificial education, on the other 
hand, the head, by means of dictation, teaching, and 
reading, is crammed full of ideas, before there is 
any extensive acquaintance with the real world. 
Now, experience is expected afterward to supply all 
those ideas with intuitions, but till then, the former 
are misapplied, and things and men, accordingly, 
wrongly judged, wrongly seen, wrongly treated. 
Thus it happens that education produces warped 
minds, and thence it comes that in youth, after 
long years of study and reading, we enter the 



EDUCATION. 171 

world often partly foolish, partly perverse, and 
conduct ourselves at one time timidly, at another 
foolhardy, because we have the head full of ideas 
which we are now anxious to apply, but almost 
always misapply. This, is the result of that hy- 
steron proteron by which we, in direct opposition to 
the natural course of mental development, receive 
ideas first and intuitions last ; because educators, 
instead of developing in the boy the ability to 
"know, judge, and think for himself, take pains 
merely to cram his head with foreign, ready-made 
thoughts. Afterward a long experience must cor- 
rect all those judgments that have arisen from a 
false application of ideas. This is rarely a com- 
plete success. Therefore so few scholars have that 
sound common sense so frequently found among 
the unlearned. 

In accordance with what has been said, the es- 
sential point in education is that the acquaintance 
with the ivorld, to obtain which we may denote as 
the object of all education, should begin at the 
right end. But this rests, as has been shown, 
principally upon the fact that in every case the 
intuition precede the idea ; furthermore, that the 
narrower come before the wider idea, and so the 
entire instruction occur in that order in Avhich the 
ideas of things presuppose each other. As soon, 
however, as a link is omitted in this chain there 
arise defective, and from these, false ideas, and 
finally, a distorted view of the world clinging to 



172 EDUCATION. 

everyone a long time, to the most, forever. Who- 
ever examines himself, will discover that about 
some quite simple things and relations the right 
or clear understanding came to him not until a 
very mature age and, sometimes, on a sudden. 
Then there lay here a dark spot in his knowledge 
of the world that had arisen by skipping the 
object in his early education, be it an artificial 
one or merely a natural one from his own ex- 
perience. 

Accordingly, the real, natural order of the suc- 
cession of cognitions ought to be explored in order 
to acquaint children methodically with the facts 
and relations of the world, without getting flaws, 
often not to be expelled, into their minds. Here 
care must be taken that children do not use words 
with which they associate no definite idea.* 

The principal thing, however, is that intuitions 
should precede ideas and not the reverse as is 
the usual case, but just as unfavorable as when a 
child enters the world legs first, or poetry, rhyme 
first. While, however, the child's mind is very 
poorly supplied with intuitions, ideas and judg- 
ments, really prejudices, are already being incul- 

* Even children very often have that unfortunate ten- 
dency, instead of endeavoring to understand the thing, to 
content themselves with words, and get these by heart, in 
order to get themselves out of difficulty when occasion 
calls. This tendency continues in after life and causes the 
knowledge of many scholars to be merely verbal rubbish. 



EDUCATION. 173 

cated : this ready apparatus he afterward applies to 
intuitions and experience, instead of the former 
growing out of the latter. 

The world of intuitions is many sided and rich 
and cannot, therefore, compete in brevity and 
rapidity with the abstract idea, that is soon done 
with everything. For this reason, it will bring to 
an end the correction of such prejudiced ideas only 
very late, or never. For whichever side experi- 
ence may show forth as contradicting a preju- 
dice, its declaration will forthwith be rejected as 
one sided, even denied, and eyes closed against it, 
only that the bias may not run the risk of 
damage. 80 it happens, then, that many a man 
carries about with him all his life, flaws, whims, 
fantasies, and prejudices that approach fixed ideas. 
For he has never tried to abstract for himself 
thorough ideas from intuitions and experience 
because he has received everything ready-made. 
This it is which makes him, makes innumerable 
men, so flat and shallow. Instead of this, there- 
fore, the natural course of education should be re- 
tained. No idea, unless based upon an intuition, 
ought to be introduced into the mind, at least not 
without verification. In this case the child would 
receive few but thorough and correct ideas. He 
would learn to measure things by his own, instead 
of a foreign standard, and would never acquire a 
thousand whims and prejudices, to drive out which 
the best part of life and experience must be sacri- 



174 EDUCATION. 

ficed. His mind would forever be accustomed to 
thoroughness, clearness, discrimination, and fairness. 

In general, children should learn to know life in 
every respect not any sooner from the copy than 
from the original. Therefore, instead of merely 
hurrying to put books into their hands, they ought 
rather to be made acquainted, step by step, with 
things and human relations. Above all, care must 
be taken to lead them to a clear conception of 
reality, and so to educate their minds that they 
will always draw their ideas immediately from 
the actual world, and form them according to 
reality, instead of getting them from other sources, 
as books, fables, or the talk of others, and after- 
wards, applying notions thus acquired to reality. 
The latter, then, they, with their head full of 
chimeras, partly falsely apprehend, partly endeavor 
in vain to model after those chimeras, and so fall 
into theoretical, or even practical errors. For it is 
incredible how much harm early implanted 
chimeras, and prejudices arising from them, cause. 
The later education, which the world and real 
life give us, must then be principally devoted to 
eradicate them. Hereupon rests the answer of 
Antisthenes reported by Diogenes Laertius (VI, 7) : 
When asked what was the most necessary learn- 
ing, he replied: u To unlearn evils." 

For the very reason, that early imbibed errors 
are usually not to be rooted out, and the power of 
judgment is the last to come to maturity, chil- 



EDUCATION. 175 

dren, until their sixteenth year, should be exempt 
from all subjects wherein great errors are possible, 
that is, from philosophy, religion, and general views 
of every description, and prosecute such studies 
only wherein no errors are possible, as in mathe- 
matics, or none are very dangerous, as in languages, 
science, history, etc.; in general, however, at every 
age only such sciences as are accessible and wholly 
intelligible. Childhood and' youth is the time to 
gather data and to learn to know single things, 
specially and thoroughly. General judgments, on 
the other hand, must still be suspended, and final 
explanations postponed. 

The power of judgment presupposing, maturity 
and experience ought still to rest, and not be 
anticipated by ingrafting prejudices which cripple 
it forever. 

Memory ? however, since it has its greatest strength 
and tenacity in youth, is preeminently to be cul- 
tivated, but with the most careful discrimination. 
For, since that which has been well learned in 
youth, clings forever, this precious gift should be 
used to the greatest possible advantage. If we 
consider how deeply sunk into our memory are 
the persons we have known in the first twelve 
years of our life, and how, too, the events of that 
period, and nearly all which we then experienced, 
heard, and learned are inirradicably impressed up- 
on it, it is a very natural thought to base edu- 
cation upon this plasticity and tenacity of the 



176 EDUCATION. 

young mind by regulating all impressions upon it 
strictly methodically and systematically according 
to direction and rule. But as only a few years 
are allotted to man and the capacity of the memory 
in general, and still more that of the individual 
memory is limited, everything depends upon filling- 
it with the most essential and important facts in 
every department, exclusive of everything else. 
This selection should be made with due considera- 
tion by the ablest minds and masters in every 
branch, and its result determined. It must be based 
upon what is necessary and important to know for 
man in general, and what for every trade and pro- 
fession in particular. The knowledge of the first 
class would then have to be divided into graded 
courses or encyclopaedias, according to the amount 
of general culture allowed to each one by his 
worldly circumstances, from limitation to the most 
necessary primary instructions to all the studies of 
the philosophical faculty. In the second class, 
however, the choice of what is necessary would be 
left to the true masters in every branch. The 
whole would give a fully detailed canon of intel- 
lectual education which, of course, would require a 
revision every ten years. 

By such a preparation the power of memory in 
youth would be utilized to the greatest advantage, 
and provide the later appearing power of judgment 
with excellent material. 

The maturity of cognition, that is, the perfection 



EDUCATION. 177 

to which it can attain in each one, depends upon 
the close connection between all his abstract ideas 
and • his intuHions, so that each one of his ideas 
rests -mediately or immediately upon a direct in- 
tuition, by which alone they have real value ; and 
likewise, that: he is able to class any intuition 
under the right and appropriate idea. Maturity is 
the work of experience and, consequently, of time 
only. For since we gain our intuitive and abstract 
cognitions usually separately, the former in the 
natural way, the latter, through the good or bad 
instruction and information of others, there is 
in youth rarely much agreement and connection 
between our ideas fixed by mere words and our 
real knowledge derived from observation. Both 
approach each other very gradually, and mutually 
correct each other. But not until they have en- 
tirely grown together does there exist maturity of 
cognition. This maturity is wholly independent 
of the greater or less perfection of his other fac- 
ulties, as these do not' depend upon the relation 
between his abstract and intuitive cognition, but 
upon the original intensity of both. 

For the practical man, the most necessary study 
is the acquisition of an exact and thorough knowl- 
edge of worldly affairs. But it is also the most 
tedious study, since it continues until old age, with- 
out the whole field being surveyed, while in the 
sciences, we master the most important facts even 
in youth, In that knowledge, the boy and youth, 



178 EDUCATION. 

as novices, have to learn the first and hardest 
lessons; but often even the. man of ripe years has 
much to make up in it. This difficulty, considera- 
ble in itself, is doubled by the reading of romances 
which picture events and men as they really are not. 
These, however, are received with the credulity of 
youth and incorporated into the mind; whereby, 
in place of mere negative ignorance, there enters a 
whole web of false suppositions as positive error, 
which afterwards confuses even the school of ex- 
perience and causes its teachings to appear in a 
false light. If the youth was previously in the 
dark, he is now led astray by wandering will-o'-the 
wisps: with girls it is frequently even worse. By 
novels an entirely false view of life is forced upon 
them, and expectations are roused that can never 
be satisfied. This exerts one of the most baneful 
influences upon their whole life. Persons who 
have in their youth no time or opportunity to 
read novels, as tradesmen and the like, have de- 
cidedly the advantage here. A few novels are to 
be excepted from this reproach, nay, rather produce 
an opposite effect, especially Gil Bias, and other 
works of Lesage (or rather their Spanish originals), 
The Vicar of Wakefield, and some of the novels of 
Walter Scott. The Don Quixote may be regarded 
as a satirical representation of these very errors. 



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